Professor Alan Ahearne:

Let's say the ECB announced ... we know that it announced in July ... summer of 2012 ... a new programme, outright monetary transactions, OMT. We know it subsequently did a quantitative easing. By announcing the OMT, it reduced the yields on Italian and Spanish bonds, which had gone up to 7%, up to where Irish bonds had been in the autumn. It reduced them ... it kept those two countries in the markets. In other words, it prevented them going into a programme. Now, the programme ... there wouldn't have been a programme because there wasn't enough money for them, but the point I'm trying to make is, if the ECB - and this is a thought experiment - if the ECB had announced in the summer of 2010 OMT, would the Irish State have required a programme. And the answer is, in my view, clearly "No".