Professor John FitzGerald:

Our successive models on how the labour market operates is not that there are nasty trade unions looking for loads of money or that workers are looking for too much. It is that the labour market produces an outcome or it is an outcome of a market.

In terms of the growth in wage rates, this was not a moral statement that workers were getting too much or trade unions were looking for too much. I suggest the Deputy looks at our analysis. We said the economy was growing too rapidly and the housing market was growing and expanding. As I said earlier in my statement, in order to get the resources to build, and let us remember 14% of the economy was housing but it should have been between 5% and 6%, the Government had to bid resources away from elsewhere. How does one do so in the labour market? One raises wage rates. The outcome was a rise in wage rates which crowded out jobs. I mentioned we were destroying jobs - jobs in DELL and other jobs were going. The problem was not that people were looking for too much money. The problem was the building sector was too big and that put inflationary pressures on the economy, which was unwise.