Mr. Ajai Chopra:

The Irish authorities were correctly concerned that the interest rate being ... that Ireland had to pay for its financial support was, you know, not ... was itself, was very high and was something that was not aiding in making its public debt sustainable. So, in that context, I think the concern about attaining public debt sustainability was very front and centre on ... in the minds of the Irish authorities. Even on the IMF side, and I think I talk about this in my written evidence, the issue of public debt sustainability was something that was of great concern. I mean, we could not state at the outset of the programme that there was a high probability that Irish debt would be ... public debt would be sustainable. We were not in a position to do that and I go through the reasons for that: that there were uncertainties in the banks; there was uncertainty about growth; there were contingent liabilities and so on. So the objective of a programme is obviously to get growth and jobs going again, because once you get growth and jobs going, that helps bring down the debt over time. But we couldn't be sure that that would happen. In retrospect, it did happen and it happened quite smartly.