Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

What I advised the Taoiseach was that the risk was too high to proceed with bond burning, but that was to proceed at that point. The rest of the Government decision we communicated to the Dáil and proceeded to the recapitalise the banks. There wouldn't have been any problem for the Government the following Tuesday to decide on an alternative course of action, but I wasn't prepared to advise to do it on that day after the conversation with Mr. Trichet. And, you know, it was our business to do what we could, and, certainly, announcing it in Parliament would have been very dramatic but it mightn't have been the most prudent thing to do under the circumstances. On the question of sovereignty, the day that the previous Government took us into the bailout, we had lost a lot of sovereignty anyway.