Mr. Paul Gallagher:

Well, the issue was considered as soon as the guarantee expired in September 2010 by Minister Lenihan and we discussed it, it was absolutely clear, and I made clear you couldn't do it under the existing legislation and you'd have to do it under new legislation. It came to the fore again, as I said, at the time of the bailout and on 29 November 2010 I confirmed in writing it could be done. It wasn't done in the meantime, I think, because of the NTMA view. I had meetings with IMF people and I think that I should make clear to the committee my understanding of the IMF, and certainly the people I met, they were very much in favour of it and thought it was appropriate. That is, the people at the lower lever, there were obviously people, different people, but they were very supportive and took the view Ireland needed to do this because of the debt burden. I had meetings again in February before I left office and we went through what could be done. Doing that, of course, is a very specialist exercise and we had our own ideas but we also had the benefit of a specialist lawyer, whose name I cannot remember, that the IMF very helpfully sent over to meet me, who had done a lot of debt restructuring and his services were available to us as to how that might best be done so as to avoid legal challenge.