He said his experience of negotiations, with both Democrats and Republicans, was that demands made were "not on serious issues" relating to spending.
If that means Mr Lamy is sceptical, I suppose he has a right to be: as director-general of the World Trade Organisation he has plenty of experience of negotiations that go on for years and years.
One former diplomat with experience of negotiations in Brussels said it was vital that the legislation setting out the terms on which the referendum is conducted be extensively debated, and that the anti-EU right wing of the Tory party is not allowed to hijack the process.
All these questions will be discussed by venture investors and serial entrepreneurs, who have a long experience of negotiations with investors.
"Even I notice I sometimes have difficulties, but as a recent graduate you will have even less weight," he says, referring to his own experience of negotiations with established professors.
Most have long experience of EU negotiations, including previous stints in Brussels.
The government aims to have 300 specialist staff in place by the end of the year, a spokeswoman said, but it is unclear how many will have had direct experience of trade negotiations.
Cormac Taylor of University College Dublin (UCD) Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research has a lot of experience with this kind of negotiation.
"We have learnt from the experience of past PLO negotiations," he says, referring to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the umbrella body of which Fatah is the chief part, which recognised Israel in 1988.
The bruising experience of the labour negotiations were played out alongside objections to The Death of Klinghoffer, Adams's 1991 opera based on the 1985 murder of a wheelchair-using Israeli tourist by Palestinian terrorists on the Achille Lauro cruise ship.
