Mr. Charlie McCreevy:

Well, from all taxes, including the ones that you designate as cyclical taxes, which resulted in large budget surpluses. What Mr. Wright and maybe other commentators seem to be suggesting, that in those years a big economic, big budgetary surpluses, that the Government should have been saying to the people, "Oh no, instead of giving you rises in social welfare, child benefit, tax reductions, etc., etc., we want to be cutting back on you." And as I said in my opening statement, does anyone think that that would be possible? Or does anyone think it would be desirable either? Either it would be certainly unacceptable politically, but I suggest it was unacceptably morally as well. We have to ... imagine me standing up in the middle of Dáil Éireann on budget night and saying, "We're going to have an enormous surplus this year, and a bigger one next year, and I'm going to cut back social welfare and I'm going to cut back tax reliefs, etc., etc., and I'm going to impose a whole lot of stringency measures." And then some Opposition person would rightly say, "But you're putting aside an enormous amount of money to the pension reserve fund and you intend on putting forward more and reduce the debt even further." Like, that type of reality is, like ... and if Mr. Wright or anybody else is suggesting that that is in the realms of political reality, he's wrong.