Dr. Michael Somers:

Well, they seemed to be running into trouble with ... they lent ordinary liquidity, and then there was a question of emergency liquidity, and the ... what was put to us was, I think, that they were up to their limits in terms of ordinary liquidity, and if they ... if they lent permanent liquidity, this would appear within - I don't know if it was weeks or a month or so - in some returns that would have to be produced and they felt that this would give alarm signals to the market, that people would realise that there was a problem with the Irish banking system if they were getting emergency liquidity assistance. Well, fine, there was a problem. We all knew there was a problem - so what were we playing at here?