Dr. Michael Somers:

I think a guarantee might have just bought it a short period of safety perhaps. I mean, if there was going to be ... nationalisation might take a while. I mean, I haven't ... I'm not very clear on how quickly you can actually nationalise a bank but you can do a guarantee very quickly and I had experience many years beforehand of a run on the Dublin Trustee Savings Bank where a panic was created because they were apparently running out of cash and it was not a scene I would want to see repeated. So, if something had to be done quickly, I would have favoured a guarantee. That did not necessarily ... guaranteeing deposits ... that did not necessarily rule out nationalising it at a later stage.