Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

No. I am not adding to the uncertainty. It is for the purposes of bringing certainty to the situation that we said that by the end of this month we would have a figure from the Financial Regulator. The Financial Regulator acts independently of me, as does the Central Bank. It is not a question of a nod and a wink to the Taoiseach of the day. It is a question of awaiting the considered judgment of the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank, which we will have imminently.

To come back to the point, the reason we are seeking to do this is to provide greater certainty for ourselves and for markets which may factor that into their equation in terms of supporting us on sovereign debt markets. That is what we are doing, and we are seeking to achieve that in an independent way through the Financial Regulator who, I presume everybody will accept, has a credibility built up in this area and is the best possible position we could put at this point.

To take the Standard & Poor's position, it was suggesting the figure would be up to €35 billion. I am not saying it is €35 billion but I do not know. That has not been communicated by the Financial Regulator yet but suppose it was——

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