Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

All right, thanks. If I could just come down to the ... I'd say it's somebody calling you for your dinner, just like myself Mr. Cowen. But the very, very last section of that paragraph it says: "In this regard, the Council opinion includes an invitation to Ireland, in common with a number of similarly [based] member states, to avoid pro-cyclical policies in the coming years." So this is very much the discourse at that time. In reviewing that period, and in terms of the action that was taken, Mr. John Moran was before the committee just a couple of weeks ago and if I can just refer to the very opening ... the very first page of his opening statement to the inquiry. It is coming up there. And his review of this period is, if you go down there under the section heading A, and I think it's the fourth paragraph down, hold it there:

But the sad reality is that an acute lack of fiscal capacity at Governmental level removed flexibility in easing the impact of those problems. The fiscal rectitude we are experiencing since, was a necessary result of the terrible and perilous structure of Ireland’s fiscal profit and loss (or if you like taxes and spending).

He then, two paragraphs down again:

This all should not be forgotten. Annual current spending (sadly, recurring) and reductions (again, recurring) in the annual taxation burden had been set at levels out of all appropriate relationship with the quantum of sustainable revenues of the state in the early years of the 21st Century.

How does that square with your analysis of what was happening?