Financier Dermot Desmond said yesterday Charles Haughey was a great man "and great men are hard to find".
"Charlie to me did more to restore Ireland's economic health than any other taoiseach we've had. In fact he started the Irish economic miracle and rightly I feel that he is the father of the Celtic Tiger."
He said he met Mr Haughey in the mid 1980s and in the more than 20 years that he knew him, he never saw or heard him doing anything that was corrupt.
"In the Ben Dunne situation which I knew about and I knew intimately about because I was asked for money, but I didn't have money at the time. Ben Dunne gave him the money and there were no strings attached because Charlie was in debt to the banks."
