Professor Alan Ahearne:

But I think when the push came to the shove, I mean, as I described earlier, Bank of Ireland for example, the Minister was very reluctant to discount bonds in there. And I think in ex postrightly so because actually when you look at it the bank was able to raise private capital and recapitalise itself through subordinated debt. It’s not at all clear that senior bondholders in that particular institution should have been discounted. It’s certainly not the ... it’s certainly the case that they should not have been ... the losses from Anglo should not have been put onto senior creditors in Bank of Ireland.

So I think at one stage they may have had closure and given those sort of more general numbers, but I think in the heel of the hunt it came down to Anglo and INBS, which was much smaller, because those were banks that were going to be wound up and they were in a very ... a different position then. They weren't going to be issuing bonds in the future. It was easier to distinguish them from any other bank in Europe so ultimately it came down to them.