Mr. Marco Buti:

Okay, let me say, first of all, this ... I want to go back for a second to what I said at the very end of my written statement, namely, that one should beware of ex post rationalisation in judging, let's say, with what we know today and what the institutions and legal system that we have today. Now, we were at the time for Ireland and for the euro area as a whole in a life-threatening situation. I think the judgment that was made by the ECB, in particular, was that in a situation of unprecedented uncertainty, going into something which would have, or could have, increased substantially the uncertainty ... market uncertainty and possible spillovers effect - and I say "spillovers" here both in terms of cross-country spillovers so to other systems, but also spillovers within Ireland - would have been, I think, too risky. This was a judgment made. At the end of the day, the troika are three partners and we came to the common judgment that this was not the right thing to do. The ECB was very forceful on that. I think overall ... and I think we have documented that in our ex post assessment of the programme that has been made available to the committee, I think we think ... I think with hindsight ... I think it was the right thing to do - not to go for the bail-in of senior bondholders.

One thing that has not been mentioned here so far, I think, is the fact that the legal system that prevailed at the time was not clear. It did not allow this in a sufficiently certain manner. So, the risk of legal systems-----