Mr. Des Carville:

Many rating agencies would come in, spend quite a bit of time with us and spend quite a bit of time in Dublin meeting various people. The Deputy has to remember that we had €375 billion of contingent liabilities at the peak. That figure is now less than €10 billion. In fact it might be as low as €3 billion. The figure of €375 billion was a massive one. This was a huge concern to the rating agencies from a sovereign point of view.

In addition, the Irish banks, many of which are quoted on the stock market and have their own analysts covering them and commenting on their profitability, viability and results, held NAMA bonds and NAMA sub-debt. It was very important that those NAMA bonds were redeemed because they were used as collateral with the ECB. That was part of the system funding which the banking system was taking from the ECB.

These were extraordinary times and extraordinarily high figures. The idea, which was absolutely correct when one looks back even with hindsight, was to reduce this exposure, both from a banking point of view and also from a sovereign contingent liability point of view.