Mr. John Corrigan:

Well, again, our anecdotal evidence was that a lot of the bonds, both junior and senior, had moved into the hands of hedge funds.

And, you know, they're fairly tough nosed individuals and they are not the type of institutions that over the long term we would have relied on for funding. So upsetting hedge funds wasn't something that particularly worried us.

The other thing I should mention was that in internal simulations which we did within the NTMA around the debt sustainability it all ... it hinged to a ... there are three moving parts within that issue of whether the debt is sustainable. First, there is the nominal GDP growth rate, second, there is the average cost of funding the stock of that and, thirdly, there is the primary surplus that you have to run in order to sustain the debt. The growth rate ... there was a lot of uncertainty attaching to the growth rate if you back to 2011. We had come through the horrors and if, for example, you took the growth rate projected for Ireland by the ECB, you were looking at debt to GDP ratio rising to 160% according to our internal simulations. So the situation was far from clear and, indeed, one of the issues which I didn't mention in my submission was that the reduction in the interest rates by the external authorities was an important factor in actually bringing about the sustainability of the debt. That, coupled with the extension of the maturities. So, if you like, what appeared like a very challenging situation back in 2011; there were certain measures which eased the challenges.