Professor Alan Ahearne:

I mean, crystallisation ... one person's crystallisation is another person's facing up to reality. And what they ... what NAMA forced and the sales forced the banks, the bankers and everybody else to do was face up to the reality of what had happened. I guess if ... let me make a couple of points. One is that the banks would have needed capital to cover those losses in any event, because there was stress tests being done - stress tests done, various PCAR rounds - and, ultimately, there was the comprehensive assessment, which is the stress test done by the ECB. And even if the loans had stayed on the banks - the books of the banks - they ... those stress tests would have seen potential losses in those and, therefore, the banks would have been required to have capital. So, it's not that the removal of the loans caused the banks to need capital, the fact that there was huge losses on those loans, irrespective of whether they stayed on the books or not, meant that the banks needed huge capital in order to cover those losses, in order to-----