Mr. Brian Cowen:

Well I think what pushed us having to go into a guarantee, or to look at a guarantee ... not look at a guarantee, look at a programme with the EU and IMF, relates to what was happening in Greece. On the bond market we were doing reasonably okay, in March and April if you look at the cost of funds for Irish Government it wasn't ... it was well affordable, it was in the fours anyway, 4 per cents. You then had the Greek situation developed where they had to go into a programme. And that sort of created ... this distinction started to be made in the markets to a greater degree than had been the case before within the euro area where different risk premia were being applied to different countries. In other words, the parameters, the range in which bonds were issuing were starting to widen. And the peripheral countries were affected by that, including Ireland. So by the time September comes and October, we're sort of we step out temporarily out of the market when we went to 8.6% in the bond market and we tactically stepped out on the advice of the NTMA. And then you have what happened subsequently as I outlined on my statement. So did it have an effect? I suppose it had some effect because when you've got to the end of the guarantee period you had the ECB obviously were starting to talk about the level of ELA, or the level of liquidity assistance that they were giving to the Irish banking system.

And we were also in the process, of course, of trying ... of preparing plans before a budget to instill confidence in the international markets that we were committed, as a Government, to moving to a reduction of our deficit over a three or four-year period. So it had some effect, I'm sure, when it got to the end of that two-year period; it must have had some effect, people assessed the situation then-----