Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I accept that, but I am speaking to section 2, not the proposed amendments. The Minister has said the purpose of section 2 is to bind this and future Governments to rules in order that we do not go crazy in the future. There is no doubt that there was an element of craziness to what happened during the boom time. The Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government inflated the property bubble. Meanwhile, the Financial Regulator was asleep as the banks were giving easy money. In addition, the European banking system had low interest rates. Therefore, there was an element of craziness.

Further to what I said on Second Stage, will the Minister clarify which one of the rules which will be binding in domestic legislation to tie the hands of future Governments would have prevented the catastrophe into which the State entered? Our debt-to-GDP ratio was well below the 60% target and up to 2008 we had a structural surplus. Therefore, which one of the rules would have stopped the craziness, as the Minister describes it, in 2008? The reality is that none of them would have prevented the crash. There would still have been a property bubble and Ministers would still have spent money like crazy because there was a structural surplus at the time. The Minister has presented the figures to me in the Dáil.