Dr. Michael Somers:

As I said, I was in New York and I got a message from Brendan McDonagh, which I picked up the following morning on my phone, about it. When you're not there, you're not very sure. I mean, I've heard so many different descriptions of what went on that night. The one that seemed to me to be most credible was that the two main banks went in and said they were prepared to provide €5 billion each to Anglo to keep them going on the basis that they would get a State guarantee and for whatever reason by, I think that was 6 o'clock or something in the evening, in the early hours of the morning that seemed to have turned into a guarantee of everything that moved. Now, what happened in between, I don't know. I mean, I wasn't there. I've heard bits and pieces of gossip but if I was there and we were threatened with a run on the bank, I would have felt that whatever else happens, we cannot have a run of depositors on the bank and if that requires a guarantee, well, we give a guarantee.

The question then is what exactly do you guarantee? Do you guarantee everything? I would have guaranteed deposits. Whether I would have guaranteed the full 100% of deposits or not, I don't know. Because, you know, there would have been an interplay of ideas. I certainly would have balked, I think, at going any further than that because I wouldn't have felt it was absolutely necessary to go any further than that. The thing, as I would have seen it, was to avoid a run on the banks, a physical run on the banks with people panicking outside banks looking for their cash back and I would have felt that would have to be stopped.