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After the game on the Hunt incident he told RTE Sport:
"It was a very harsh red card, his momentum took him into the player and he won the ball. I was very disappointed with their centre half, I felt he was getting a yellow card until he said something to the referee.
"But even with ten men we played well and took the game to them. We could have got the equaliser right at the end but it wasn't to be. It's unfortunate but it was a great battling performance in the second half.
"We started to play a bit of football last 15 or 20 minutes of the first half but we didn't start well enough and got punished for sloppy defending."
With qualification almost certain to be over the manager was still confident he had progressed with this team and was building for the 2010 World Cup.Within the media and the general public the view is somewhat different and they are asking Staunton to do the honourable thing and step aside.
Staunton said
"We're in a building process, it's coming along nicely, there's some good young players coming through. Hopefully by the time the World Cup comes along we'll have a settled team."