Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

If the professor was not chairman of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council but spoke simply as a professional economist, would he give any credence at all to the strains put on the system in the seven years we have been through? I refer, in particular, to the health sector and the cases my eminent colleagues raise every day in the Dáil in the course of looking for more expenditure. Does he agree that our infrastructure has been badly run down and, to maintain the tax take in the future, we need to start building it up again?