Professor Alan Ahearne:

No, that would have been viewed as too costly in the environment at the time. The point of having the funding back was, while Anglo did have ... did have some funds, it had some deposits, it did have ... it was able to raise funds ... and the Irish banking system as a whole needed funding, private funding. So the plan was to try ... how can you keep funding in the system, that funding that they had access to, without having a bank that can lend, and that was the argument for that particular split.