FORMER US president Bill Clinton has told an audience in New York that he was "in the right place at the right time" for the Northern peace process.
"The truth is that when it comes to the Irish peace process, I was in the right place at the right time," he told the National University of Ireland Galway gala dinner on Monday night.
"The people were ahead of the politicians - I just had to get the politics in line with what the people already wanted."
Mr Clinton was honoured at the dinner for his role in the peace process. The chairwoman of the American Ireland Fund, Loretta Brennan Glucksman, was also honoured for her philanthropic work at the Metropolitan Club dinner.
Mr Clinton said he was "pleased beyond words" with president-elect Barack Obama's transition team. "There are many complexities to be dealt with in the economy," he said.
"I think the president-elect has the best team in place that I could imagine he could have in place . . . No one knows what lies ahead and there may be things that we have not anticipated which may go wrong.
" I think that the Irish, however, are very well positioned to deal with all of this," he added.
"No Irish person will be surprised by all this bad news," Mr Clinton said, to much laughter.
He thanked the Irish Government for its support of the Clinton Foundation's HIV/Aids Initiative.
When asked whether she worried about the future of philanthropy directed from the US to Ireland Ms Brennan Glucksman said: "We are all very cognisant of the economic downturn. But we all have to stay with what we believe in.
"Amounts may change, but if you truly believe in something, you'll stay behind it."