Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 16 July 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Bertie Ahern:

-----I'm not going to deny it but I don't think it's a huge part of the budget. But can I just say ... you mentioned about David Doyle and David Doyle, in fairness to him, as a good Secretary General, he regularly made the point that we could not sustain that level ... that figure. So, he did do that and in the meetings ... the bilateral meetings I had, he regularly made that figure. But we were talking about coming from whatever it was ... 77,000 or 75,000, down to what the Department of Finance believed was the sustainable figure, which was 65,000. That was always what we were talking about. And I believe, Deputy, to this day, if that had have been the correction that was necessary, without too much difficulty to the budgetary situation, we could have done that. If the correction was ... it went 88,000, 77,000, 65,000 and it was projected for 50,000 or 53, 000 in 2008, we would have been able to that without knocking out budget. And can I finally say on this-----

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