Mr. Ajai Chopra:

Deputy, as ... you know, we did meet with a wide range of social partners when we were here. We were very much aware of the distress being faced by many Irish households. You've got to understand that programme funding is not earmarked; even the earmarks that I talked about earlier between fiscal financing and the banks was a notional difference. The issue for us was to encourage the Government, as it was designing its fiscal consolidation measures, to be mindful of choosing measures that took equity and social hardship into account. Now, were we fully successful in getting them to implement more measures to ... to ameliorate social hardship, I ... you know, that's ... that's for you to judge. These were choices that were made by the sitting Irish Governments at the time.