Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wouldn't paint the Fine Gael Party in the same box here as the noble party to which you belong yourself. We did point out and took a very principled stand on benchmarking and on decentralisation, at some political cost I might say, because populism was as rampant then as it is now and people seeing 53 locations for decentralisation on the back of an envelope said, "This is great."

But actually, obviously, it was never delivered because, as you know, there were only 2,000 of the 10,000 jobs actually delivered through a system that hadn't even been thought out properly.

You make the point that, you know, we were advocating even for more public spending. Well, far from that, because a central focus of our opposition to Government was the massive waste and the inefficiency at Government level. Public spending, as I said, being increased without the ... any reforms in the public service and the budget process to which you were delivering for the people.

Back in 2002, I warned, in my response to the budget to the then Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, that expenditure grew by 50% in two years, while revenue grew by 4%, no corresponding increase in public service over the same period. Pay costs up 11%, social welfare up 8%, rest of spending is up just 1%. These are stark figures, as you know.

In 2004, I said that taxation and spending have more than doubled in recent years. So, in 2005, I said that what happened yesterday was the injection of an unusually large amount of money in the economy - this, coupled with the money that would come from the SSIAs, will fuel a massive consumer spend which will inevitably lead to increases in costs and prices, as the spending Government spending follows political and election cycles, not economic cycles. And six months before the election, I said the budget continues the reckless expansion of Government taxation and spending without the necessary public sector reforms.

So while we did accept the figures from the Department of Finance and from the ESRI, obviously those growth figures that were projected could only apply if you had a focus in an economy that was competitive and lean, and focused on that.