Professor Patrick Honohan:

Certainly they would have permitted the ELA but would they have said, "Don't worry about that. We will pay for Anglo Irish Bank"? There was no hope but there could have been some possibility of hooking them in by saying "We don't want to pay for this and we're going to let it go. What are you going to do about it?" There could have been a very tough political negotiation, not with the ECB. It would have to have been political with the rest of Europe but Europe would not have been ready for that, as it has not proved to be ready in many cases since.