Professor Patrick Honohan:

Well, first of all, many ... several outside observers in public and in private suggested that some course of action along these lines would be correct. I think they were not accurately informed about the legal status of the guarantee or of the political environment in which any action of that might take but given that serious people with experience in banking and international finance were saying this, it had to be considered. And I felt it's important to put down in a footnote here, and only in a footnote, that we weren't just blithely proceeding and not considering all options. This is an option that had to be considered, you know, it wouldn't be a question of the Government, it would have been a question of the Government working with the Oireachtas, with the legislation. This is all under Irish law. You know, Irish law can be changed. But, as you say, the moral commitment is very strong and in my view equal or essentially equal to the moral commitment, as well as the legal commitment, of Government, of straight Government debt. And that's an argument not fully recognised by a lot of the outside observers who said, "Why are you paying for the banks? Banks are banks," you know, "you can get new banks, creditors, private creditors are private creditors." They didn't realise that the obligation to the creditors of the banks had become equal in importance to the-----