Mr. Charlie McCreevy:

Well, what we did was to, I think, I would have maintained anyway, Deputy Doherty might disagree, a pretty successful economic and budgetary policy for our period in office. You must remember, it was ... I know, I've said about high interest rates could have lessened the impact of the subsequent property crash but remember also that high, that low interest rates gave an opportunity for Irish businesses in the non-construction sector to actually try to make a bob, because we had been paying for years colossal interest rates and it was hard. How some businesses survived over the previous 40, 50 years is a great tribute to them, so there were benefits to having the low interest rates and the Irish economy had become very, very, very competitive over a period of time. And another thing may I say, if you look back at commentators when I was in government as Minister for Tourism and Trade when we had to devalue the Irish currency, we were forced to devalue the Irish currency, it wasn't working, and 19 out of 20 economists predicted that it would be a disaster and it would lead to rampant inflation. In fact, it was the makings of the economy-----