Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Last point then Chairman and Mr. Ahern is this. Mr. Ahern, you said in your opening speech page 2:

The main economic problems facing Ireland in the mid-1990s were high unemployment, net emigration, relatively low incomes and the need for increased productivity. A decade later these problems were substantially solved.

And then you said Mr. Ahern in page 19, reminding younger Members of the Oireachtas, when you came to the House in '77:

National debt was an unsustainable millstone ... 20 % of all taxes raised in the State were used to service the national debt. In 2007, my last full year as Taoiseach, that figure stood as low as 4.3%.

Can I put it to you, Mr. Ahern, that it would be delusional to think that that, or to allow that, or hope that that would be your legacy, when the gigantic property bubble which happened on your watch, created a situation where a few years later, you had the return of precisely the evils that you described of unemployment, mass emigration and a huge national debt and 20% currently, unfortunately, of taxes going to service that debt?