Mr. Charlie McCreevy:

Well, let's go back a little bit. There were three separate Bacon reports. They were commissioned by the Minister for housing. The first one was requested in November '97, and reported in April '98. The evidence in all of that time was on the first-time buyer. If you read the commentary in the newspapers and the Dáil debates, everybody was concerned that the first-time buyer was being forced out of the market, and he or she couldn't get their foot on the first rung of a ladder, so the Minister for housing requested the Bacon report. The Bacon report made, kind of, certain recommendations and that resulted in the Finance (No. 2) Bill of 1998. The main reasons for ... there were a lot of other things in the Bacon report related to housing supply, etc.-----