Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I was in the Chamber when the Taoiseach answered the question put by Deputy Howlin. He simply made the point that it is better to borrow to keep somebody in a job than it is to deal with the consequences of the person not being in a job. Lest there be any doubt about this, when we have to make additional resources available to pay jobseeker's benefit as more people become unemployed, we will of course, do that.

On the issue of the general assessment of our preparedness in terms of the national finances, options could have been taken in recent years to bring us to the point where we would have a higher surplus that we are projecting to have this year. However, if levels of capital investment in our economy were still in line with where they were in 2014 to 2016, no doubt I would be facing the charge that the Government was not investing enough in building more homes, hospitals and so on.