Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

If you think about it, Senator, the markets had decided there was a big problem with the Irish banks. The share price had plummeted substantially, I mean the share prices of, say the two main banks, were probably €16 and €20 probably back in January 2007 and in late '08, early '09 their share prices were down to maybe 5 cent to 10 cent. So the markets had decided that the banks had a big problem and people were just selling their shares in the banks rapidly which drove down the share price. I think that, you know, markets have no sentimentality, they don't care how much profits you made in previous years, they care about the situation as of now and what they see, and they made the view that the banking system really was in big difficulty and the reality was that the only option to secure the banking system was for the State to rescue it. By the State rescuing it, it resulted in that the international community was lending to Ireland as a sovereign through the NTMA, was no longer going to lend to Ireland as a sovereign because of the weight of the losses in the banking system which needed to be rescued by the State. That resulted ultimately in the bailout.