Mr. John Corrigan:

Absolutely. I mean, we were asked for our views by the Minister, which we gave in the detailed letter of 27 November. And a central plank to that letter was mitigating the cost to the State and increasing the chances of achieving that sustainability, which was very marginal in ... in our view, through burden-sharing, because this extra €35 billion which the troika insisted on, was a huge potential addition to the debt. So we weren't told about that. You'll have to ask the Department of Finance why they didn't tell us, but anyway we didn't know. I went along to the Government meeting and, as I have explained in my submission, I was told there by Minister Lenihan that the G20 had ruled that out. Why they ruled it out ... I gather it was a line, and I'm into hearsay, I don't know whether I'm ... or speculation, it was a line pressed by the American Treasury Secretary, who was worried about the systemic issues. Mind you, it seemed totally incoherent to us because if you go back to the statement made at Deauville by Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy, they were calling for the haircutting of sovereign bonds. And why would you haircut sovereign bonds, why would you not haircut the bonds which were the source ... at the source of the problem, i.e. the bonds issued by the challenged financial institutions? So it seemed to us in making that ... in making that submission, that it was certainly not inconsistent, or if you like, consistent with what ... what ... Merkel and Sarkozy had said at Deauville. And also, if I may, on page 95 of Vol. 2 of my green book there ... and I hadn't seen this 'til it was sent to me by the committee, if you look at the second paragraph there on page 95 of Vol. 2 of my green book, this is the IMF looking back on the experience of the programme, they say, "The second lesson is that it is unfair to impose the burden of supporting banks primarily on the domestic taxpayers while senior unguaranteed bank holders get paid". And then, in the last sentence in that paragraph, it says, "Eurozone partners precluded the Irish from imposing haircuts on senior creditors of insolvent banks."