Mr. Ed Mulhall:

It was a very unfortunate and insensitive remark. I think he regretted it very quickly himself. The reason we quote it - I quoted it in my longer statement - is that it was indicative of a certain attitude to people who were criticising or seen to be critical of the economic policy of the time. It was not the first time that a similar comment was made. In fact, let us consider the "How We Blew the Boom" programme again. I do not want to keep coming back to it, but there was an equivalent comment the following Sunday directly about the boom programme from the Taoiseach. In George Lee's contribution to the O'Donovan book, he sees that comment as indicative of comments he was getting from political circles in that period.