Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

Now I, Chairman, I think the issue ... the guarantee was done, I mean everybody knew - in terms of the size of our economy, €160 billion, a €400 billion guarantee - everybody knew that that ... if that guarantee was called, Ireland couldn't pay it. I mean that's just the reality. Merrill Lynch make reference to that in their own report. I think the issue that came out in the two-year period really was the cap ... was the losses that the banks had built up on their books which were there, which had to be recapitalised and the scale of the recapitalisation basically drove Ireland out of the markets.