Professor John FitzGerald:

There is another way, I suppose. If a number of people were looking for a job in the public sector, one says, "Oh, well if you-----", but, no, Ireland does not work like that. There is a groupthink where everybody thinks the same. There are serious problems with that especially in a small society, but latent influence, I am not clear that there is any. There will be overt influence which may or may not work; I do not think it does work. The influence which does work is when people come up with evidence which suggests a different conclusion. One's job is, even if one does not like the evidence, to go off and assess it, and change one's mind if the evidence is different.