Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This falls on deaf ears but pretending is what brought this country to where it is. I remember a Minister at the time saying the Government did not need the money being generated. A senior Minister said the Government had so much money that it did not need it. Deputy Billy Kelleher was inquiring about why people felt there was so much money around. There were no options. The Government has taken the right option, which is tentative but well-balanced and calculated. It will have the desired benefit of stabilising the progress so far.

It has been mentioned that there was no relief for the hard-pressed, which is true unfortunately. Everyone in the country is hard-pressed. Even someone as optimistic as Deputy Billy Kelleher, who was always optimistic in government, is suggesting the poor unfortunate people of the country will receive sudden overnight relief now that someone else has taken over when it took ten years to sink the economy to the depths it was in then.

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