Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Are we running the risk of repeating the same pattern, I will not call it a mistake, that we finished in the 1990s following the racking up of debt in the 1980s? We did not manage the debt. We let our national growth reduce the national debt instead without having paid anything off of it. Given the level of national debt at the moment, is there a concern, if we continue to grow at significant rates, that debt as a percentage is reduced but not as an actual figure?