Professor Patrick Honohan:

I apologise, I misunderstood. One shock or another would have caused it. Could the system have survived? There are risks on both sides. A sequence of good news could have hit Ireland over a number of years and caused it to survive. Looking back at history one wonders how great banks such as JP Morgan and Chase Manhattan survived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Given that they got over the crisis and became solid, it is possible for a very risky financial entity to suddenly become respectable and solid, build up profits over the years and get through a crisis. However, the chances of it happening were too low to allow it to take those risks.