Mr. Charlie McCreevy:

Well, we, at all times in the Department of Finance, would have been saying, is that, we had ... have had a great period of economic growth resulting in budget surpluses, etc., etc., etc. But that was never going to continue at that pace for ever and everybody recognised that, including myself and other members of the Government. So what we were trying to do in 2004 was to ... in that ... for June 2003, setting out the parameters for the next three budgets, to say, "Look, this is the background to the upcoming budget. Growth has slowed down, we're not going to have these exceptional revenues that we had in the past, so we have to cut our expenditure cloth to meet these new circumstances." That would have been the overall ... in fact there ... now in the Department of Finance and everybody else, we wouldn't ... we didn't have a big crystal ball and, like, so we could say what was going to happen in 2006. And, by the way, everybody was understating the amount of housing that was being constructed. Every time we were told from '98 onwards that we'll meet the housing target if we build, say, 25,000 houses a year and then 32,000, the figures kept exceeding that. So, therefore, we were at all times saying, "Yes, anyway, well, the exceptional economic growth that's in a whole variety of areas - not just in construction - is going to slow down somewhat", and then we had the general economic background and a slowdown in the world economy in 2001 relating to the dotcom bubble collapse etc. etc. etc.