Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Well, Deputy, for a number of reasons. First of all, the Labour Party manifesto was very much prepared in conjunction with other Labour Party colleagues, including, obviously, the then leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Rabbitte. But in the documents that you sent me, I just want to highlight two quotes from the ESRI reports which, when I read, just brought me back to the atmosphere of that period. In the ESRI report of December 2005, the ESRI actually spoke about the growing aura of invincibility about the Irish economy and then, in the very last paragraph, they introduced, as was common at the time, and the then Taoiseach of the time utilised it quite a lot, the notion of a "soft landing"; bit like a soft day in the west of Ireland; a little bit of rain, but it wouldn't do you any harm. That's the way it was set out. And, as late as May 2008, and I remember when I read this being really upset by it, the ESRI said there were difficulties but the Irish economy would rebound; it was resilient in face of adverse circumstances. And again, one of the famous quotes of the era: "The fundamentals are sound". Now, in that context, if you were to take the Labour Party manifesto of then, you would see that the Labour Party manifesto is, first of all, based on the growth estimates and figures provided by, and examined by, the Department of Finance, the ESRI figures-----