Mr. Kevin Cardiff:

I don't recall it being putting to me at the time, Deputy. I'm not saying it wasn't. Just to be clear, the idea of a NAMA programme or of an IMF programme, one imagined the guarantee and the associated responses in 2008 or 2009 had gone badly wrong. Well, at that point, we might have looked for some .... we might have had to look for some external support. Certainly, it wasn't the plan ... it was nobody's intention but the first time I asked for some very, very preliminary and informal work on, you know, how one actually gets an IMF programme, was in September 2008, and at that point, I was thinking, you know, there was no work done on it. I just asked a colleague to make a discreet inquiry as to how you get into these things, if you do need them, just as a precaution because things were very bad from then. Then in 2009, I believe there were hints in Washington, possibly also in Dublin, that, you know, IMF would be available if we wanted them. At that point, the Minister gave a pretty firm instruction to me and to others that we were not engaging with that suggestion but in part because ... remember, a bank crisis means you have to fill gaps in liquidity and gaps in bank liquidity are enormous. Capital is a lesser problem; liquidity is an enormous gap. And you really need the firepower of a central bank to do that. Now, in 2009 and into 2010, we had no problem getting funds for the Government, which is what the IMF provides. What we had a problem with was the banks getting funds for themselves and, for that, we needed the ECB. So there would have been no huge advantage, let's say, to an IMF programme before we got it, if it didn't come with some ongoing access to bank liquidity. The banks were our problem and then by the time we got into the IMF programme, the sovereign itself had a problem and that's what IMF programmes are for.