Mr. Charlie McCreevy:

As a result, GNP, which I think is the more relevant measure of expenditure than GDP, it more or less stayed the same and came over 30%. You must remember the economy was expanding at a very fast rate, the population was increasing, there was greater demand for services, which were going to cost more. You can't have a good medical service, a good education service without people, and people cost money. So, therefore, if you want to do things in the big areas of public expenditure ... do something worthwhile in those areas, then you have to put the resources, and that's what we did. At the same time, we ran ... the biggest thing we could have done was to keep reducing the national debt. I was in the House here, Deputy McGrath, when the national debt was 122% of GNP, when the country was practically bankrupt and we never thought we'd get out of it. And we did, and we saw the percentage debt-to-GDP ratio coming down, which freed up massive resources, because we didn't have interest payments to be paid to all the money that we had borrowed, and that allowed other ... that money to be used for worthwhile social purposes.