Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

But, obviously, both in my position as leader and, obviously, with Minister Bruton's position as financial spokesman at the time, you had other opportunities by way of priority questions, the presentations in respect of the budget. If you look at, I think, about 184 press releases from Minister Bruton, they were all about competitiveness, about effective spending, about analysis of that based on getting back to where we were at the end of 1997, export-led growth so that you could create jobs and people, obviously, could benefit from that. So I mean, you know, the Private Members' business is an opportunity for parties and, obviously, backbench Deputies and Front Bench Deputies want to raise issues that might be of more local than national importance. So from our point of view you've had the opportunity and different operations and a specific focus through the spokesman on finance on dealing with the issues of regulation. Minister Bruton met with the banks on occasion to discuss that and pointed these things out consistently in budgetary contributions about the growth in public spending, the focus on the housing and the property construction sector and where that was going to lead us to. I did the same myself, in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 in terms of budgetary contributions.