Mr. Dan O'Brien:

On whether Greece will leave, I still think there is time. I do not believe so much energy would have gone into five and a half years to keep the currency union together if there was not a willingness to go the extra mile. Consequently, there is time and I do not believe it is inevitable at this stage. I still believe there is time, although there is no doubt but that the politics of this mean the 18 want to have the other one move most of the way. As to whether it is vindictiveness, no one comes out of this well but one must note that even before this Government came to power, the previous Administration had alienated everyone else, even their own cousins in Cyprus and even centre-left governments around Europe. There simply was a sense - rightly or wrongly - I am not giving a view but simply am saying that rightly or wrongly, the things people were saying about Greece in different member states, whether they were on the centre-left or the centre-right, were extremely negative. That is how people felt and as to whether they were justified in that regard, I simply am telling members what I heard. I do not believe it is a vindictiveness but that relations soured to such an extent that there is a real frustration that this has dragged on for so long and so many hours of prime ministerial time and the time of finance ministers have gone on the whole thing.

On the costs, they are huge as for any country to leave a currency and establish a new one, there are massive balance sheet issues for the private sector and the government sector. There are huge costs. As for the benefits, were Greece to write off all its debts, every single cent, and not pay anything back, it would save about 4% of GDP in debt servicing costs. Incidentally, 20 years ago it was paying 12%, or three times that. It would not have any roll-over issues but the question then is: when its GDP collapses and its deficit balloons out again, how does it fund the deficit? It is an austerity machine. If one has seen austerity up to now in Greece, what would happen were they to leave would be infinitely worse.