Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Well, as, as you say, you know, in retrospect, due diligence of economic expectations wasn’t strong enough but political parties weren’t the source of forecasts and no political party would be credible in offering our forecast of what’s happening to the economy. So, we relied on the Department of Finance and ESRI forecasts. Clearly, in retrospect those forecasts were wildly optimistic but we, we relied on those. We built into our manifesto, and you’ll see it there, the ... a provision that within the public finances, a contingency would have to be built into the public finances for the expectations, you know, for what might go wrong because of vulnerabilities. We also very clearly, I mean, the previous four years had been characterised by a growth in the rate of public spending from about 6% up to 13%, a progressive growth in spending as the election approached. We did the very opposite, we said “we must now grade back our growth” and we did that in line with what had been our traditional view, that it should be kept related to the, the growth in GDP of 2%-----