BUNDESBANK president Hans Tietmeyer is far from a "dry" central banker as he proved when using a mixture of anecdote and well honed phrases to get his message across to a packed audience of Irish business people, academics and policymakers at the Institute of European Affairs. He started by advising Ruairi Quinn that he had to develop "13 different ways to say no", something they are well used to doing at Bundesbank HQ in Frankfurt. He later chided EU governments for the "political prestige" which he argues stopped them devaluing in time to avoid the 1992/93 current crisis. And, commenting on the upcoming EU presidency, he said he had every confidence, as his distant ancestors in Westphalia knew, that "it would be hard to find more efficient missionaries than the Irish". Perhaps we need to send out a few more saints and scholars to persuade them all in Frankfurt that the pound should be a founder member of the EU monetary union.