Mr. Donal McNally:

Well, I ... we marshalled arguments. We looked at various different incentives, incentives on the principal amount, incentives on the interest, but the main reason would have been possible cost and the fact that we weren't sure that this would incentivise savings. I mean, it may have; I don't know if it did or not. We tried to build in factors to stop the SSIAs being used to finance consumption. So, they were the two main reasons - the cost and whether it would be effective in stimulating saving.