Mr. Charlie McCreevy:

So ... for 2003. So, therefore, we made ... I made decisions at that time that, even though I produced a memorandum in June to say X level of the spending, when I got around to doing the budget, I forced on Departments a lower level of spending, much, of course, to annoyance of my Cabinet colleagues, much also to ... even in the Department of Finance didn't believe it could be done and we did it.

And we did ... we, then in ... for the 2004 budget we kept spending to a relatively low level again and did a very small, as I told you, very small tax package in both of those particular budgets so, therefore, we got ... what I would term ... we had got over the difficulties and we had still a balanced budget. And that was the intention.