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

No, I didn't. I mean, I suppose what we diagnosed was that what needed to be done was to rebuild our export base, to, you know, look afresh at the way spending was being undertaken. It wasn't a question of spending cuts as a lot of people talk. I mean, the economy was growing in those years. It could afford economic ... a growth in public spending programmes. The problem was that spending programmes grew at twice the rate that was affordable and they didn't deliver value. So we looked beneath that bonnet and say "Why is that happening?" So we looked at, you know, issues like benchmarking, looked at issues like how ... how are budgets put together? What accountability is there for outcomes within the system? Are individual public servants or Ministers made accountable? When they say they will do something, is there any day of reckoning? We found that that was all absent and, you know, so we were-----