Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 2 July 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Brian Cowen:

I'm giving you an answer as to why I increased spending. We made policy decisions in that respect and we did it on the basis on having achieved those basic guidelines, that I would regard as requiring, we weren't going to be completely, over the following five years, increasing spending at that rate again. We would obviously have to adapt our policy as things went ahead. And in 2008 we did do that in terms of the reduction of housing output, we budgeted for 2008, at 50,000 units as distinct from the 90,000 units there were the previous year. So we were going, at that time-----