Professor Alan Ahearne:

No, Olli Rehn had been in Dublin on ... early that week - so on maybe the 8th or the 9th - and he discussed this with Olli Rehn. He met him first privately then he came into the room with several officials and I was there. And Olli Rehn said "This is certainly worth pursuing". That was the point I was making, this precautionary plan. Later that week ... you know, so it looked at this stage there was going to be some time to develop this, to get the national recovery plan out and talk to the various ... to the two Finance Ministers. Later that week - the phone call that I am talking about is from Seoul - there was a G20 meeting. Now, I was in the United States ... I flew to the United States, to New York, later that week so I was in the US but I called back, I think, on the Friday. There was a ... Reuters or one of the news agencies had a story that said Ireland applying for the ... is going to apply for a programme. So I called back and said "What's this all about?" and I was told at that stage that a call had come in, I think, the night before, sorry, or at some stage around then, from Olli Rehn to Brian Lenihan and he had said - in the conversation as it was related to me - "Hi Brian. It's midnight in Seoul. Things have changed." And what he meant was ... "Things have changed.", is that on the Monday or Tuesday, there was this potential to explore a precautionary programme but by the time we got to later that week there was no time to do that.