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

When this Government was formed all of the emphasis and all of the lecturing to it concerned the deficit. The deficit was the Holy Grail we had to aim for at the end of the lifetime of the Government and further down the line into 2018. I doubt that any economist reasonably could have forecast that we would be heading into the end of 2016 with a balanced budget, arguably, given the redefinition of 0.5% or minus 0.5% that is in prospect in terms of the European rules.