David Drumm, the U.S.- based former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive, has spoken out in the week he declared bankruptcy in an American court to avoid being prosecuted in Ireland.

Drumm, who now lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, owes Anglo $11 million, but his bankruptcy in America means he will probably never face a court in Ireland.

The Irish Prime Minister among others has demanded he come back and face the music and declare what happened in Anglo but it now seems unlikely that he will.

He claims he offered to settle the matter with Anglo but they refused for political reasons.

He said: "I have to believe that if you took those political considerations out, that the bank would absolutely have taken my offer because (otherwise) it makes no commercial sense.

He told the Sunday Independent that he was devastated by what happened at Anglo where the Irish taxpayer is now on the hook for as much as $50 billion dollars because of bad loans.

"I would say to you at a human level, there isn't a day goes by, all day and sometimes all night . . . I'm haunted by what we as a bank, as the management, as the board of the bank, could have done differently to not end up where we ended up," said Mr Drumm.

"If people could understand how truly sick to my stomach I am about all of the people I know in Ireland who are suffering, that have lost their jobs and are just generally in despair because they can't pay their mortgages.

"I have friends and people [in Ireland] who I worked with and whom I speak to every single day, who live with it every day.

"I came from a very ordinary background. My father was a truck driver. He raised eight kids. My mother saw very hard times, because if you think about it today, trying to raise eight kids on a truck driver's wage, it's not even imaginable how that was done.

"I'm not that far from understanding what's going on in peoples' lives. I'm sick to my stomach, frankly, about what's happened to our country. I'm sick to my stomach about what's happened to a bank which for 20 years did so well and contributed to the country in the way it did.

"It's a terrible calamity and a poster child for everything that's happened to our country and I have to live with that every day. But I genuinely am horrified by what has happened."

"My position has been consistent from the very start: that I will co-operate with all agencies. Despite the spin in the national papers, I am in very regular contact with all of them and I have sworn testimony to one agency and made submissions to another.

"I look forward very much to continuing to be co-operative and getting all the information that all the investigating agencies need to get the full story here," he said.

"So many things have been thrown at me now. I'm a bankrupt. I could never have imagined that would happen to me. I've got young children. It's about getting through today and tomorrow.

"I have to figure out now how to look after my family. That's my job. It's impossible to think of the future without just thinking of surviving, to be honest with you."