Mr. Brian Cowen:

No, it's not the case at all. You couldn't get a winner in a Galway tent, Deputy, never mind anything else. I mean there's not a lot of mythology from people about this, sort of, stuff. Other parties have "dos" in Punchestown and there's not a word about it. Never heard a word in the media about it. I mean these ... this was a fundraising thing that was done over a number of years. A hospitality tent, I suppose, you'd call it. When I became Taoiseach, I felt that it had outlived its usefulness and it ended but, you know, there was ... I had read about this thing about, you know, the mythology that grows up about contracts being signed and big meetings being held in this tent and if there were, I mean, why would you bringing the media to sit down beside you, if there was all this surreptitious activity going on? Sure, it's all nonsense. The people were attending a race meeting and we, as a political party, a democratic party that has audited accounts, you know, there for everyone to see ... where we were ... where people were able to come and take part in what was going on there. But there was no ... it's no big deal, Deputy. It's not a ... it allows people to set up this, sort of, contact-equals-collusion, sort of, equation that goes on and goes on with certain elements of the political spectrum. So, you know, it's ... the answer ... to come to the substantive part of your question, which is nothing to do with the tent at all, the substantive part of your question is was: do people or have people in that sector influenced me as Minister for Finance? No is the answer. I am my own man and I meet many people. I meet many people before a budget; I meet the Construction Industry Federation; I meet the Irish Bankers' Federation; I meet the IBEC; I meet the trade union movement; I meet St. Vincent de Paul; I meet voluntary organisations. I listen to what everyone has to say.

I don't think it's a practice even that's continued now, someone was telling me. But I did all of that and I'd meet them in my daily life as a politician when I was there for 27 years and I can give you an assurance, Deputy, an absolute, unequivocal assurance that any decision I ever took in the public policy area was what I regarded to be in the public interest. And I am not owned by anybody, I am not beholden to anybody, I am my own man, I always have been and I am very proud of that fact and the fact that you might be-----