Mr. Charlie McCreevy:

Well I'd be very disappointed that the estates which were started upon weren't completed and I'm further disappointed that people didn't go to live in them. So, therefore, I'd prefer if that hadn't occurred, naturally, but it's the whole property market collapsed and I, of course, would be very pleased if some local authorities or public bodies would take over some of these estates and make them available to people who cannot own their own homes. But that's a matter for the Government of the day.

I would prefer ... I would prefer ... the idea of the incentivisation was to allow people to get on and do this particular type of work. There were lots of jobs and incomes created in that time. I'm also very pleased to go around the country and notice lots of facilities in the country which local business people and local developers kept ... did for the community, including sponsoring everything from football teams to everything else. That has been missed as well and I'm very glad of the economic activity that people in the more rural parts of Ireland who didn't get the same great benefits from ... say the Celtic tiger that occurred in Dublin, say, Cork, and say, Galway, that they got some benefit as well. I'm disappointed that it didn't end up to ... it didn't end up in a way that I would have envisaged. But I think it did generate a considerable amount of economic activity and there were spin-offs from it at that time.