Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)

Is there not a contradiction in what the Minister said? He said he is trying to maintain a social insurance fund and yet reduce the inputs to it. It seems utterly nonsensical. The Minister will have an opportunity to try to explain that in the coming weeks. Despite asking for it repeatedly, information on the cumulative deficit in the social insurance fund since its inception to 1997 has never been supplied to this House. It would be very helpful if that information was supplied. How many billions of euro did the State have to put into this fund until it went into surplus in 1997?

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