Mr. Bertie Ahern:

I'm saying, Senator, that when you are trying to responsibly do your job and carry out your functions, you want to have within the budget year that you're dealing with, that your ... you stick as to what the rules of European Economic Monetary Union were, and the Growth and Stability Pact; that your budgets were either in surplus or close to surplus; that your debt-GDP ratio was low; that your current budget deficit was low; and that you could use resources enough to deal with the demands that were there.

As I said earlier on today ... so that was the position. I think we were very responsible. You asked me, in hindsight, if I knew that when there was a hole in the budget would we, as Germany did ... built up a surplus that you would deal with that difficulty. Of course, in hindsight, you would do that. But each year I, and Ministers, and I think the country ... economic analysis of Ireland ... remember we were held up as the model worldwide for a long time, that we were doing the right thing.