Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The benefit is that in the past five or six years we have been in a position to put in place a capital programme, which was not the case previously when we essentially had a maintenance programme. We came into office with a capital programme which, based on the total assets employed in the health service, represented approximately 2% of the capital employed. That is a maintenance programme and not a capital programme. That is what we inherited.

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