Mr. Ajai Chopra:

Okay. I think it's important to step back and recall why the European institutions, and European politicians especially - more the politicians, not really the institutions - were very keen to bring in the IMF into this process. I think the IMF was brought in to provide credibility on economic policies, given its extensive experience on crisis management. Remember, the IMF had been in the business of crisis management for many decades and had built deep and broad experience on this front. For European partners, however, crisis management was a relatively new task and they were less experienced in programme design. I think it's fair to say that some European politicians also saw the IMF as a counterweight to the Commission, which some creditor countries viewed as being somewhat feckless in this area. But the IMF did end up being a junior partner to the European institutions, and key decisions were taken by the Eurogroup. And, hence, I do think that overall - and I'm talking about the euro area in general, not so much in Ireland - I think this ... that this did affect the IMF's ability to enhance the credibility of euro area programmes. I do think in Ireland, though, we were influential with our partners. We may not have won every battle, but we were influential and we did manage to steer things in a way that, I think, was right for Ireland and the euro area. I think I should also say that, you know, even though the European partners may not have had the crisis management experience to start with, they learned very fast.

And they quickly developed the necessary skills and they gained the experience through hiring practices and also setting up new institutions such as the European Stability Mechanism. So I believe that now, in 2015, the IMF has no particular advantage on programme design and monitoring for a euro area member.