Mr. Charlie McCreevy:

Well, I think to be fair to all Governments of all persuasions, I think, and all the politicians that I have known, whereas politicians naturally will always have at the back of their head "I'd like to be re-elected", I would definitely say that all the politicians I know want to do the right thing. But they're not against one another, the fact that a politician wants to be re-elected and doing the right thing. Like, I gave various examples earlier of things that we had done which couldn't have had the political impact in the short term of a positive nature. So, I think, look, a democracy such as Ireland is less, well, nearly 100 years now. I'm sure things ... the way we do things now are different to the way of doing 60 years ago and hopefully we learn all the time and do things somewhat differently and improve things. I think that's what we're all about. We might disagree about how doing it, we certainly disagree on economic philosophies ... the way of doing things. I don't have any difficulty with people that stand up for a strong view, such as Deputy Higgins, and I have said that publicly when I was a Member of Dáil Eireann. I would like to think the same right exists for people like me to have strong views, not of the same type.