Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Okay. You are familiar with much of the content of it. When this proposition was being tested against Mr. Trichet - and one of the purposes of engagement with Mr. Trichet was that we would have ... that that engagement would be evidence that could we test with other witnesses, so this afternoon is an opportunity to test it with another witness - Mr. Trichet says: "As you know" - he’s talking about the whole ELA funding - "As you know, we could also have continued on our side after having gone from 100% of GDP to 200% - this is Irish GDP - and why not 300% of GDP? Then what would be the commission of inquiry [referring to this inquiry] be asking for? You would say, 'Were you totally crazy, at the ECB, to continue, when we were going into the wall at 100 miles per hour, to continue providing liquidity and liquidity and liquidity?' " So the question I put to you, Mr. Ahearne: is Mr. Trichet right? If this action hadn’t actually happened and his correspondence of November hadn’t kind of named the situation, and, as we see from Mr. Cardiff’s testimony, that we were going into a bailout programme anyway - if we had just delayed and stayed on the never-never with the ELA, would the bailout have been bigger for Ireland?