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

Well, first of all, we were trying to come up with an alternative to the promissory note. And it would involve, obviously, the European Central Bank. And after a lot of discussions at different levels, the European Central Bank's biggest problem was while they would agree to some level of principle that what we were looking for was a request that they would consider, that their legal mandate prevented them from monetary financing and getting over the legal obstacles for the European Central Bank ... and the onus was on us to come up with alternative proposals. That was very difficult. So we wanted to have it worth ... I mean you could come up with, you could come up with a lot of alternative proposals which would be just as expensive as the promissory note. So, like, we needed an alternative proposal that would be a big gain for the Irish taxpayer on the sustainability of the debt and on the bonds. So the first shot at it was to have a bullet bond that you wouldn't have to pay for 40 years about.