Professor Alan Ahearne:

I mean, I think it put in writing what had been said already. It wasn't that this was a complete shock. Maybe it was a surprise but what was a surprise was why this was put in writing. But that message that the ECB wanted Ireland in a programme, that the ECB was desperately unhappy with the amount of money it was lending, it wanted its money back, it wanted Anglo, which is the money we're talking about - the €40 billion that had been lent in ELA - it wanted the Government to pay that back by borrowing from somebody, either from the markets or from the troika. So it wanted Ireland to replace extremely cheap money through the promissory note arrangement with expensive money and Brian Lenihan said, "That's completely ridiculous. This is ... How is this going to solve our problem?" I don't remember talking ... explicitly asking him how he reacted to that but it put very starkly the ECB's view on Ireland at the time.