[Bono at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland yesterday]
Bono spoke to Pat Kenny on Newstalk from Davos this morning following a night with the Irish delegation.
Bono: “It’s all sorts and the Taoiseach and Minister Noonan are doing an unbelievable job with the IDA. That’s what I was doing last night. They had a load of people in the room, locked in a room…”
Both laugh
Bono: “…until they agreed to move their companies to Ireland: Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs was the theme last night. And I must say the two of them made me very proud to be Irish. And Barry O’Leary, the guy from the IDA – he spoke extremely well, very…without notes, just really beautiful about the country and then, you know I was really struck by..these two men spoke very modestly on our behalf. They’re actually very modest men themselves. And that I think struck everyone that was there. I made up for it by the way. But they were very modest. And the coalition – Labour deserves some [inaudible] too, you know. They’ve been through rough, rough times and they’re still there for a lot of people but, you know, you can see some light at the end of the tunnel.”
Later
Pat Kenny: “In Africa, good governance is the holy grail because it is a continent of unbelievable wealth, if only it could be tapped for it’s people, by it’s people.”
Bono: “You are exactly right and, you know, I should say something, I don’t know if people know this but Richard Bruton, Minister Bruton, was really pivotal in getting new legislation in Europe, to make it law, that any mining company, in the extractive industry, registered in the European Stock Exchange, have to publish what they pay for those mining rights. And you think, well, of course, what could be difficult about that? Well you see that is where corruption is, the declared amounts and the real amounts are often different by hundreds of millions. And there’s a transparency revolution breaking across the world right now because of technology, technology is turbo-charging that revolution, people know what’s going on in their government budgets, or want to know.”
Right so.
