Mr. Rory Montgomery:

Exactly. I started off in Brussels in 2009. The late Brian Lenihan was a great friend of mine and used to stay with me in Brussels when he was there for Council of Ministers meetings. The great thing about it was that the people in the Department of Finance, who were not generally keen on sharing information with me or with diplomats, knew Brian would tell me exactly what was going on, so they did not bother trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I had great friends in the Department, I have to say.

There is a debate to be had on the approach that was taken to austerity. The balance of economic argument has shifted since that time. I have a couple of things to say, if not in favour then in exculpation of the EU's actions. First, it found itself in an absolutely unprecedented situation. None of the tools necessary either to deal with the banking sector or more broadly were present. A whole range of things have since been put in place, including the stability mechanism and various banking reforms. In a way, everybody was kind of groping in the dark. The second thing I would say, to state the obvious, is that, fundamentally, we brought the necessity of support from elsewhere on ourselves.

We mishandled our economy very badly in the run up to austerity, as was obvious.