Mr. Jonathan Sugarman:

I would like to break that question into two parts, one about the collapse and the other about sufficient regulation. In terms of the collapse, the overnight guarantee was put in place a year after I resigned because we had no money. That is what the report says. The Irish banks said that they could not open up on Monday morning because they had no liquidity. The bank bailout that ensued meant all these banks were kept going. I fail to understand why it was decided that a small business was of vital importance to the country but five separate boards of directors had to be maintained and paid for by the taxpayer. These are banks that had all been run into the ground. As an economist, my view is that we should have protected depositors up to a certain amount of money. Given that five banks had collapsed, the State, for the sake of competition, should have taken ownership of two and slowly revived the banking system, much like what was done in Iceland. However, if one looks at Holland and Belgium, one sees that they did something similar to what was done in Ireland in terms of Fortis Bank and Dexia. These were merged into existing banks in the Netherlands and Belgium. Effectively, they collapsed but they just changed their names. I hope that answers the question in terms of collapse.