Mr. Bertie Ahern:

If you asked me to say now, if you asked me to say now ... should we have built up more balances if we knew there was going to be a bust in 2008? Yes. If you ask me from the position where I was Taoiseach ... chairing the Cabinet in 1998, 2000, where we had unemployment and a whole lot of infrastructure which we had to deal with, and a demand to try to bring up the country to EU averages, then the answer was no at that stage. Like if hindsight was foresight, you know, I'd be a billionaire and so would you. But at the time I thought what we were doing was conservative. And in fact I was considered a conservative at that stage.