Mr. Ajai Chopra:

Of course they were considered because I think, you know, the social consequences was something that was very much in the minds of both the previous Government and the current Government. I mean, you know, the national recovery plan was drawn up with the social consequences in mind. The new Government also had social consequences in mind. I've gone through some of the details in my written statement but I come back to the point that what we could do was to advise and try to steer the Government towards measures that mitigated some of the social consequences as they chose the revenue and the expenditure measures to undertake. And I think, you know, the data suggest that this was largely achieved. I don't ... you know, the ESRI, of course are the real gurus on this but my impression is that the distributional consequences of this programme, when one looks in terms of disposable income that takes into account taxes and welfare payments and so on, has not been of any great significance.