Mr. Brian Cowen:

Well, I certainly think, you know, I think people ... it's become very fashionable now to run down social partnership. I remember the '80s. I remember being a backbench Deputy in '87 and how difficult things were. And I believe that the methodology that we used then, that was undertaken by the then Taoiseach, Mr. Haughey, was the right way to go, and is the right way to go. We can't have, like in some countries, traditional arguments about capital and labour based on old 19th century models of, you know, "You come in here and talk to me about your wages and you've nothing else to say about life." You know, we have working people, we have educated people in this country. We don't have, thankfully, a class society. We have a certain sense of community and society about us. I believe that the social partnership model in many ways worked very well. Obviously, there were some mistakes, there was over-ambition in some respects. There was maybe a need to re-look at the institutional set-up from time to time. But it did work for this country and it put everyone on the same page without compromising people's right to represent their own interests. And what we now have, what's called by the present Government, social dialogue. And-----