Professor Alan Ahearne:

I guess for ... for all the time that I served in the role as adviser, I was sceptical that a good bank could be carved out of ... out of Anglo. I felt that its ... its business model - which was large exposure or large lending to commercial property - that that would no longer be ... be viable. The management had talked about a new sort of a small business bank but I was sceptical about that. I think the Minister was open-minded on it. I never recall him being enthusiastic about this proposal. The proposal to carve out a small bank came from the management. The Minister felt that ... the argument was put to him that this carved-out small new business bank ... it might be worth something and therefore it might save the State a few billion in terms of the net costs of the banking system. So that obviously got his attention. He was aware that ... that we were going to need more competition in the banking system, so the idea of another bank being there was somewhat helpful. So any interactions I had with him, he was open-minded on it, but I never remember him being convinced one way or the other. So he wanted to give it ... this proposal a shot. It was being sent over to the European Commission for approval and back. I was seeing all these ... this documentation and I think what happened, as we got into September ... August and September, is that the European Commission had gone very cold on this plan and the Minister felt that it just ... just wasn't going to work.