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

Well, when I went into government in March of 2011, IBRC was down €41 billion to the European Central Bank in ELA funding and in the proposal put forward by the previous Government the previous January, they had made allowance for €50 billion of ELA funding. So, the chairman and the chief executive of IBRC constantly talk as if IBRC was a going concern. IBRC was a bust bank and we were getting pressure from the European Central Bank and from the troika to start paying back some of the ELA because ELA was ... by definition, it's emergency liquidity assistance and you can't be in an emergency long term. If it's an emergency liquidity assistance, they expect to get it back.

And I know that Mr. Aynsley made references to the American book. The American book was very valuable. It was dollar denominated and we needed to show progress. But I think the big misunderstanding was for some unknown reason, I think the chairman and the chief executive had an idea that they could trade Anglo Irish Bank into being a solvent bank and it was as clear as crystal that that was mission impossible and we had to start getting market value for certain loans and paying down ELA and that was ... I mean, I was working under much wider concerns. I can understand why a chief executive of a bank would have one view, but I was working on much wider concerns. Now, I also saw in some of the documents that Mr. Aynsley said, "Ah, we might have got 100 million more". I don't know whether he is talking dollars or euros, but we might have got 100 million less as well. The American market wasn't ... was bouncing around a bit at that stage, but it was recognised internationally as a huge successful sale and one of the first people to congratulate me and himself was Mike Aynsley on the success of the disposal of the American book.

So, you know, any time, like ... one of the big problems in disposing of assets below market value is you can always present an argument that if you only waited, you know, you'd make a fortune out of it, you know. We had it when we offered Bank of Ireland shares at 10 cents on the market and we had the great and the good telling me and going on radio programmes saying, "Ah, these are worth nothing. They're worth zero. Nobody will buy these shares", right? And then, foreign investors came in from Canada and the US and they put a big private sector investment into Bank of Ireland and then they made a lot of money out of it. And the same guys who told me that no one would buy them come back saying, "You gave them away for nothing". The same people. So, like, it is very easy be wise after the event, but we were in a dreadful stage and we had to start realising some of the assets to pay off the debt.