Mr. Charlie McCreevy:

Well in the budget documentation you will see various updates about economic stability, growth rates anticipated, etc. etc. What you do after ... and I'm sure it's the same now ... when the Minister for Public Expenditure will now set out his memorandum, there's a considerable amount of horse-trading in this on the spending side. The taxation ... decisions on the budget are made separately, or they were in my time. We made them but certainly in ... within ... I dealt with spending and culminating in the publication in November of the Abridged Estimates Volume setting out the Estimates for the following year. And then I dealt with the taxation package mostly on budget day. The Government has gone back ... or has for some years now to have a unified system, of announcing about tax and expenditure changes on the one day and it's all done together. That was actually done some previously ... all the years up until about, I think, my predecessor, Ruairí Quinn, might have got into the form I followed in 1996 ... having a separate process, or maybe I did it myself, I just can't remember that. So ... the ... we then went along then ... the memorandum was put to Government and you can note that all years bar the Estimates, bar the memorandum for 2003, that the spending figures for all years, except for 2003, the figure in the budget day or the Abridged Estimates Volume was less than ever and I think that's the first time, someone has told me, in the history of the State that has occurred.

Is that we didn't ... we must ... I'm sure it's ... I can't say it's the same now, but it I ... it may just be. When the Minister for Finance sets out in budgets in his memorandum in the middle of the year, he's trying to get the process started. He's trying to get some law and order on the figures because every Department will come back immediately with gigantic figures, so if you didn't start the process by putting some guidelines down what the totality will be, you'll always be beaten up by the various Departments, and that I'm sure has occurred long before my time and probably occurs to this day as well.