Ms Ann Nolan:

Yes. It is known as a repo. It is a swap. I give you the bond and you give me the money but at a later date we will swap them back. This meant between that March and the next March we had to come up with an alternative treatment for the promissory note. We had been in discussions with the troika for some time about different options, none of which was attractive from the point of view of the Irish State because most of them were much more short term than the one we ended up with. The first mention I remember of a possible liquidation of IBRC was in the very beginning of September 2012, when there was an initial discussion involving the Department and the troika members, on a very small scale, about whether we could replace the promissory note with long-term bonds if IBRC were liquidated. If IBRC were liquidated, the promissory note would be left in the hands of the Irish Central Bank. The ECB was extremely unhappy with it having it, we would volunteer to swap it for long-term bonds and the bank would be liquidated. This was totally separate from the questions on Siteserv.