Mr. Brian Cowen:

Well, no, the letter dated 14 October relates, as you say, to a four-year economic strategy that was being prepared and developed by the Irish Government at that time. It is true to say that, before that, back in September, from September on, the ... as I was saying earlier in a previous session, the Minister for Finance was discussing with Commissioner Rehn, in the normal way between member states and the Commission, what our plans were for fiscal consolidation in the following number of years. We had to ... we hadn't a sustainable position, Deputy, that we could contain. So in other words, he is simply here confirming that he hopes that the strategy that we're developing will meet these things he's talking about. Now we were, it was clear ... under Stability and Growth Pact rules, we wanted to get back to below 3% as quickly as possible. We didn't want to be in excessive deficit procedure with the European Union. We also wanted to obviously start reducing the public debt-to-GDP ratio because, if it kept going up, you could get to a point where it wouldn't be sustainable and you ... the sort of measures you'd have to contemplate at that stage would be even more severe than the corrections we had to contemplate.

So, whilst he's setting out here parameters, it's as a result of discussions that had been taking place with the Irish Finance Minister that he is coming, sort of, saying, "We hope that the strategy that you had is going to be along the lines that you've suggested." We were suggesting these programmes.