Mr. Dermot McCarthy:

Yes, there were concerns, Deputy, in terms of that rate of increase, but it had a number of elements. There was the increase in head count and there had been very significant and deliberate increases in the staffing of a whole variety of services which were regarded as underdeveloped. Then there was the question of the rates of pay, which were, in effect, a function of, as I mentioned earlier, the levels agreed in the private sector and, in a sense, that's as it should be, that the public service should follow rather than lead. In aggregate, the affordability of this and the competitiveness dimension of the overall situation were concerns and there was clearly going to be an adjustment required, which was, in fact, explicitly referenced in the text of the social partnership agreement in 2006, "Towards 2016". And I was interested to see, in the documents sent to me, background papers prepared in the Department of Finance, which I hadn't seen before, regarding the desired outcome of those discussions and I was, I suppose, pleasantly surprised to see that the text of what they desired was actually reflected in the text of the outcome, so they were obviously making their contribution. So, an adjustment to a different path, both in terms of the composition of output and the funding of the State, was flagged, was expected but was, I believe - and I did believe - something which would evolve in a ... not in the teeth of a collapse.