Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Now, there was ... we had ... in opposition we had been briefed by the troika because they didn't ... obviously, they didn't brief us fully because they were negotiating with the Government, but they briefed the Opposition. So I had got a lot of briefing in December, before the programme was announced, on what would be in the programme. And we committed to renegotiating it. There were things ... there was elements of it in it I didn't like, but I thought the main thrust of it was that there was an over-reliance on increases in taxation, particularly personal taxation and I thought the balance was wrong. I thought the correction period was too short, so we renegotiated an extra year. And then there was things like the minimum wage, which ... you know, they were kind of stand-alone items-----