Mr. Marco Buti:

During the whole implementation of the programme - and, I have to say, I pay tribute here to the Irish institutions, to the Irish stakeholders in general. We had many contacts with the social partners. We had contacts with the NGO - I think Social Justice Ireland - in particular. We listened very carefully to what we were ... we were told, and, I think, as much as possible at the time we tried to lessen the impact on the less well-off. If one looks at the ... at indicators of, let's say, inequality of distribution of income, of material deprivation, etc., you can see that the operation of the tax and benefits systems helped substantially to lessen the impact. This does ... I am not minimising at all the fact that it was harsh for everybody, but in terms of overall, let's say, fairness considerations, I think the programme was implemented adequately. We could have done, I think, even more to protect a certain-----