Mr. Ajai Chopra:

Okay. I think some of this I have talked about already. I think the real interest here is the issue of the €35 billion. Now, you know, you've got to recall that at that point the Irish ... the Central Bank had already done a number of exercises, PCAR 2010, that had certain ... that had come to certain conclusions about the recapitalisation needs of banks but the issue was that that still did not have credibility. Actually, I think this has given me a quick opportunity to correct something ... to at least ... something that I have been saying, that I have said in my written statement. In my written statement I use the term “stress tests” a lot. I shouldn’t have. The correct term really is asset quality review and stress test. The stress tests themselves were a less important part of that exercise. The much more important part was doing this deep dive diagnostic about the true condition of the balance sheets - not about the capital needs, but the true condition of the balance sheets, the provisioning, the collateral, the quality of loans and so on, and not just the accounting of that. So, you know, so that was the real contribution, more than the stress test. So, as we thought about the financing needs the idea was to ... to be on the safe side on the recapitalisation needs so that there was enough confidence. So the way we approached it at the time was what would be the capital ratio that would convince markets, right? And this was at the time where the transition to the Basel III capital requirements was under way. So the thinking was “Let’s link this to the Basel III transition”. So Basel III at the time was already being seen as the norm by financial markets and it was also what was being achieved by banking peers in other countries. So we started with, you know, the 12% core tier 1. So ... and what was already done under PCAR 2010. But then we knew that there was the asset quality review coming and that might ... you know, that itself might come up with some additional needs. We didn’t know what that would be. So the division of the ten and the 25 was, "Let’s get to 12% early in the programme, even before the asset quality review." So that was ... to the 12%, sorry, so that’s where the €10 billion was notionally allocated. These are notional amounts.

The 35 ... the total 35, was seen as a ceiling on what might be required in a worst-case scenario, right? Because, as I said earlier, augmenting tends to be difficult and also, remember, by putting in this number, we ended up giving Ireland a cash buffer. So it ended up being beneficial, you didn’t need as much. But it gave Ireland a cash buffer that put it in a much stronger position to end the programme with this cash buffer and not need any follow-on assistance.