Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Because in ... in the bank restructuring package, we were reducing effective banking to two pillar banks: AIB and Bank of Ireland. And we foresaw that very shortly they would be trying to get funds on the market. And the advice from the Central Bank and from Finance - and the NTMA didn't push that advice, you know, beyond having written it, they didn't push it hard - that the risk was too high. That if we were trying to put two banks in place to fund the economy, that if the first thing we did was to burn the people we expected to lend to them, that we wouldn't ... we wouldn't get the money, so that was the reason.