Kevin Humphreys (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending. The German finance committee met the Minister today and the Minister said a politician must manage a Department and make decisions in a different way from an economist. One of the pieces of advice the committee gave us was that we should hire a very good PR firm in Germany to convince the voters that they must deal with the legacy debt, because politicians there have to sell the same concept about legacy debt to the German taxpayer. I do not know if they gave the same advice to the Minister. The Minister said indications suggest growth will take us below 3% in 2015. He referred to hard facts, by which I presume he means the fact that tax income is ahead of profile and that the drop in spending is less than the profile and other elements we have seen in the early part. Have I missed any hard facts that suggest we will hit below that 3%?