Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

Yes, because if it turns out that you've a big problem with your banks, and nobody at the time knew the scale of the problem with the banks, that, effectively ... markets are cruel, they will, you know, drive up the cost of your ... of your debt funding very, very significantly because if they think you're stuck for funding, they will charge you more ... more for it.

Around this time, Deputy, so that ... to put it in a bit of context here, what was being talked about in the secured lending scheme - which the Central Bank didn't want anything to do with, they wanted to push the problem all onto the NTMA - would be that there'd be a €20 billion secure lending programme, entirely funded by the NTMA, that we'd go out and borrow the money in the market and put that money into a secure ... a fund, called "the secured lending fund", and lend it out on a collateralised basis back to the banks. So what I was talking about there, really, to be upfront with you, was that if we ended up borrowing €20 billion in the markets and lent that to the banks and suddenly the banks couldn't pay it back or the collateral wasn't worth that and there was a hole in it, then, you know, the markets wouldn't have been very forgiving if we had a shortfall of €5 billion or €10 billion.