Mr. Brian Cowen:

Well, it was made with the information that was available. I mean, as I'm saying to you, if I had ... if the ... if the thing hadn't happened until 29 October, for example, and we had sent in Pricewaterhouse, as we did on 3 September, and we came back out with the information that they were ... was coming ... emerging from there, that would have given us information that would have been ... would have been reassuring, as it turned out too reassuring, but it would have been reassuring regarding this solvency question, and regarding what was the right thing to do to get liquidity back into the system. So, I'm just trying to ... you can only deal with it as it is, and there's a suggestion that, well if you had more information you'd have made a different decision. Well, the more information we got was within six weeks of making the decision. And that was reaffirming the fact that the basis upon which we were making the decision was correct, if you know what I mean. So, the counter-factual is this, would it be ... would it have been ... you see, there's no ... I'm not saying that, you know, there's only one answer to this. I can't say that, because, to be honest with you, if you tried ... if you tried a more intermediate step, would it have worked? Could you take that chance? I mean, if, if you ended up with just nationalised ... so you just nationalised Anglo, and you put ... gave a ... this idea of a political guarantee, and you just ... out ... words, saying that we will stand behind the system as necessary. We had made that comment in relation to the ... when we increased the deposit guarantee limits. That broader statement was made, so if you like, you know what I mean?

And it certainly assuaged the vast majority of people who have deposits under €100,000 in the financial institutions because that silent run, if you like, stopped and the negative commentary stopped because people could see "okay, my money is safe", because for the vast majority of people that was the, sort of, money they had in there but, as you know, there was a wider market sentiment that had to be addressed as well.