Mr. Brian Cowen:

Well, that's a, sort of, hypothetical ... it's a hypothetical ... it's very hard to answer but I'll try as best I can. Well, what would have happened? You'd ... first of all, you'd have to make the decision: do you want ... do you think it's important to have a domestic banking system? Is it of strategic importance for the modern economy to have a domestic banking system? I think there's no doubt that the question to that ... the answer to that has to be "Yes", for a whole lot of obvious reasons. Let's be clear that this is a question of pressing a nuclear button or saying, "Okay, let everyone ... let it fall where it may." That would have had devastating effects on the Irish economy, devastated it. And, as I say, one person said to me, "We'd go back a generation, 25 years." Now we went back five or six, let it be said, because we were back to revenues ... it was '05, maybe we had to go back to spending then of '06 to try and get it sorted out over time, or '07, so we did lose some years because of this, the progress that we had made, but we didn't go back 25 years. Secondly, as people can see, I don't ... and I wish ... I want to make it clear that I wish the people of Greece well in their situation.

You know, you can't allow a bank to close, in my opinion. It's not the problem when the day the bank closes is the problem, it's the next day it opens is the problem. Because everyone walks in and says, "I have X euros here, I want it all and I want it now." And every bank business model, however conservative it is, is dependent upon deposits in and loans out, that not everyone that has a deposit comes in and looks for their money the one day. So, I'm answering your question the best I can. That's the second point.

The third point is there was no cost-free solution. We were hoping there might be a cost-free solution but there wasn't a cost-free solution. And the third, the fourth thing is, was there anything else you could do? Well, what the guarantee did, it wasn't that it brought the liabilities on us that night, fortunately the liabilities were in the system, they hadn't been identified and the market drop hadn't been completed to know what the difference between what the funding gap was going to be. It was an issue that was emerging over time. But, what it did do was (a), as I say, without us putting up money upfront, it got us money back into the system which was critical to keep the thing going. So we bought time. I'm not suggesting that a guarantee is always a solution to the problem but it's part of a solution. What would have happened, to answer your question, is we would have had to recapitalise much more quickly and come up with money far more quickly for that purpose. If it was a case that we wanted to keep a domestic banking system and we had problems about ... even if some of them had a problem with solvency, you'd probably work them out over time, but you'd have to do something to keep your system going.