Johnny Logan, the three time Eurovision Song Contest winner and more recently a vocal competition critic, has once again given a piece of his mind to the media. He has today spoken out about those behind attempts to bring the Eurovision Song Contest back to Ireland. At the same time, he hints that if he is to write another Eurovision Song Contest entry, it will once again be for the country he has already claimed three victories for.

In an interview with the Irish Times today, Johnny Logan, who won the Eurovision Song Contest as a singer in 1980 with What's another year, 1987 as a singer songwriter with Hold me now and 1992 as a songwriter for Linda Martin's Why me?, has spoken about Ireland's chances of winning the competition again. His comments will raise eyebrows at national broadcaster RTE, who were believed to be seeking Johnny's songwriting skills earlier this year before announcing a national final to select the country's 2009 Eurovision Song Contest entry.

Johnny Logan comments on the team behind Ireland's Eurovision Song Contest bid, saying: “They’re like headless chickens – they know what result they want, but they don’t know how to get there. Successive Irish attempts at putting together the winning structure have put it into such a bad state that we’ve become a joke.

“The best chance Ireland has of winning it again is to take it seriously, and that means putting something into the Eurovision that has a chance of winning. And that requires the country being involved. What the Irish entry in the Eurovision has become is the property of a small group of people. It doesn’t belong to the country anymore, and that, ultimately, is the problem. In order for it to get back to some semblance of respectability, the song has to be representative of Ireland. We have to prove ourselves again, and we can’t presume that just because we’re Irish that everybody loves us. Those days are gone.”

Talking about three offers to write a Eurovision Song Contest song for other countries (which esctoday.com believes to be from France, Montenegro and Germany), Johnny Logan says it “would be very hard to write a song for any other country except Ireland.”

• You can read the full Irish Times interview, including a look back at Johnny Logan's career here.