Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I outlined to Deputy Doherty my position on burden sharing with senior bondholders and it remains the same. I would like to do it but I will only do so in agreement with the European Central Bank. Deputy Donnelly has a different view. He believes the Government should move unilaterally and, in effect, refuse to pay through the agency of AIB. However, we need AIB to be a working pillar bank for the economy and if we followed his advice it would have defaulted, so we did not have a choice. Deputy Donnelly's position is not fully thought out. He is applying now the type of formula that might have been desirable for Anglo Irish Bank in 2010 to a working bank such as AIB on which so many people are dependent.

On the issue of the identity of the bondholders, I challenged the late Brian Lenihan in the Dáil on their identity, because at the time a website had published a list of names which purported to be the bondholders. However, this list was never verified and at a minimum it was probably incomplete. I am giving Deputy Donnelly the answer he gave in the same terms.

Perhaps the website had a very large degree of accuracy on the identity of the bondholders, and I have no doubt some of the names mentioned in the newspapers recently as AIB bondholders were correct, but there is no way of verifying a complete list of bondholders other than the method Deputy Donnelly mentioned, of calling a creditors meeting. However, as soon as one brings the creditors together, one has taken an irrevocable step of going towards default. One can shake it out but one has gone beyond the point of no return. If Deputy Donnelly visits euroclear.com or clearstream.com he will see the transactions because they are holding agencies for the bonds. It is possible to make assumptions because of the trades but I do not have access to a complete list which would verify who the bondholders are in any particular institution, principally because they get sold on and the original bondholders usually are not the bondholders who are extant.

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