Professor Patrick Honohan:

I worked hard on the wording of that and the footnote associated with it because it is potentially a delicate issue. I have no evidence of any corrupt transactions and I said that in the report. I still have no evidence of that. It is a different matter to say whether people were well liked or known and so on but it is a leap that I am not prepared to make - from the fact that people were well liked and well known, to the fact that anything wrong was decided on the basis of that.