Three hours after his feet first touched Irish soil, Sir Donald Tsang feels he knows us. But it is not the presumptuousness of a jet-setting financial market mover, it is his education: seven years with Irish Jesuits in Hong Kong. Now the Financial Secretary of the former British colony, he insists he is in town mainly to learn.

What really piqued his interest, he says, was the succession of newspaper reports outlining the Republic's economic success, and its capacity for attracting investment by information technology and financial services companies.

"I for one wanted to come here and touch base with politicians here, meet people in business circles here, and size it for myself," he says.

Hong Kong is trying to make itself a hub for broadband Internet and for multimedia content creation, and Sir Donald headed straight for Dublin's Citywest business park to see how IDA Ireland strategists had clustered technology at the location.

In meetings with the Tanaiste, Ms Harney; the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy; and the Governor of the Central Bank, Mr Maurice O'Connell, he will also be enquiring politely about the Republic's tourism industry. Hong Kong is already Asia's most popular tourist location, but he believes it could do better.

Having a Disneyland would help, and that is why Sir Donald has invested heavily in bringing the theme park to Hong Kong, with his government investing around 10 times as much as Disney for just a 53 per cent stake in the venture. The move has raised eyebrows, however, with those who say it is evidence of a more interventionist approach by the traditionally free-marketeer Hong Kong authorities.

Sir Donald disagrees: "I didn't go to Walt Disney, they came knocking on our door. That is how it started. But this is a project that just cannot take off without some public sector support - that was the case in Tokyo, that was the case in Paris - because it is a very land-intensive operation.

"If you look at the internal rate of return of the project itself - that's a raw deal. But the economic benefits for the community as a whole are enormous. What is important is that this is an infrastructural investment: the hotels outside of the theme park, the restaurants, the retail outlets, the transportation, the airline tickets - all these things," he adds.

He does admit, however, that the Asian financial crisis undermined his absolute faith in market forces to deliver prosperity.

"We had been managing our financial affairs very cautiously, like a stingy housewife. We always balanced the books, we never overspent, we have a very sizeable fiscal surplus - something the equivalent of about £45 billion. We have no debt. So we should be all right," he says.

But in the crisis that hit Thailand and spread across Asia, Hong Kong was the final target. What he terms "speculative forces" began selling the Hong Kong dollar, and equities, around the clock.

"By the middle of August we realised that if we didn't do something the market would collapse, the monetary system would collapse, business would come to a halt, interest rates would rise to a phenomenal rate, and the stock market would be in freefall," he adds.

Rather than impose currency controls - an impossible option for a free-market government - Sir Donald decided to fight the market. He used government money to shore up the currency market, and in an unusual move, also bought €10 million (£7.88 million) worth of shares in local companies.

"Having been a free marketeer for three decades, and believing strongly in the sanctity of the market, I realised that occasionally, on rare occasions, the market fails. And I had to intervene - I shocked myself," he says.

He is now selling off the shares, slowly. For the record, his portfolio is now worth around €18 million.

Are there lessons for Ireland in Hong Kong's economic cycle? Sir Donald says that if he had known during Hong Kong's long boom what he now knows, he would have invested heavily in hightech training and in infrastructure.

"Similarly, I am not trying to teach Ireland anything at all," he adds, "but I would have thought that Ireland should look particularly at putting a lot more resources - I mean really, really, a lot of resources - on infrastructure: roads, piers, transport, superhighways."