Mr. Diarmuid O'Flynn:

No. I finished school in 1970 at 16. I went to London and did accountancy for a year and a half but I could not take London because the weather was like this. I came back and was involved in construction for over 20 years as an engineer and subcontractor. Then I got into sports journalism and worked in the cartoon section of the Irish Examiner, where I was for over 20 years before being recruited by Luke "Ming" Flanagan to advise him on economic matters in Brussels after this issue emerged. I have no qualifications in this area.

We know what we know but there is an awful lot we do not know. This is not just a question of economics, there is also a question of right and wrong. That is the bigger question for me. What was done to us was wrong and even the guy from the IMF accepts this.

We did not have the support structures in place for a new currency when it was launched and they are trying to put them in now, with the Single Supervisory Mechanism, the Single Resolution Mechanism and the ESM. They were needed at the very beginning. If they had been in place when the banking crisis hit Ireland, the shock would have been absorbed across the entire eurozone and we would not have been landed with that bill.