Mr. John McCarthy:

Apologies to Deputy Doherty. In various publications, the stability programmes and so forth, if you look at the economic text there, we were the contrarians because we were saying that fiscal policy is inappropriate, we were saying that there is an over dependence on construction, we were saying that there is a loss in competitiveness that needs to be addressed. That was coming from the economic division. Did the Government act on it? Well, to be fair, the Minister signed off on the budget strategy memorandum each year. So he agreed with a more prudent fiscal stance. That's typically June or July. Unfortunately, later on in the year that process was overtaken by events. So what was agreed initially and what was brought to Cabinet early in the summer was subsequently taken over by events and policy became-----