Mr. Ajai Chopra:

Senator, you know, again, I'm not in a good position to talk about the current developments in deleveraging. I'm just not familiar with what exactly is happening.

What I can talk about is the way the issue was being thought of at the launch of the programme. There was no question that the Irish banking system, which had grown too large, needed to be reduced in size to make it, so that the size of the banks' assets were better aligned with stable funding sources. That needed to happen. Our view was that, obviously, fire sales would have been very damaging. It would have actually been counterproductive and we were not in favour of that and, obviously, the Irish authorities were not in favour of that. There was this ... there was on the ECB side having been such ... having become such a large creditor, they were keen to see the deleveraging proceeds being used to reduce their own exposure. But as I did say in my written statement, fortunately, the ECB recognised that fire sales would have been counterproductive and they did not press for them, so the issue did get defused.