Professor Patrick Honohan:

Well, I suppose I am obviously much more close to the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, and I think he was very much admired by his colleagues at the Eurogroup, admired and liked by Jean-Claude Trichet and others. That is certainly ... I have less visibility at the ... what people, you know, the European Council, I didn't have any visibility into that for the Taoiseach. But I would say domestically, to the extent that I was at a number of meetings with the former Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, I found him to be a very business-like and effective chair and in charge of any meeting that I was at, courteous, in command of the situation and that was what I saw. I know that ... I think there were a number of hard things that had to be ... not hard things that had to be said, just bad news that came out from time to time. The Quinn event, when we had to intervene in the insurance company and despite ... that must have been a body blow to the Taoiseach.

And, despite that, he was very conscious that this is a very serious problem, I'm ... and I ... you know, and he sometimes doesn't get that image but I found him to be businesslike. But my main dealings were with Brian Lenihan, I mean, I only had a very few one-on-one meetings with the Taoiseach. It was mostly in environments in which he was the chair.