Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment has a detailed assessment of the numbers of migrant workers in each area. If there are redundancies in the building sector that will have an effect. Other sectors will take up a significant amount of these, for example, there is an increase in the home improvements area, and in offices and shopping centres and other developments under the NDP. FÁS and the Department have good figures for this trend. The latest unemployment figures up to September at 4.7% do not show any great increase in unemployment in the construction sector. It is too early to say but that will grow based on the projections made.

One of the advantages of having surpluses in good years is that if things are tight in another year we can continue to honour our capital programme. That is our intention. PPPs account for €13.4 billion in the NDP, many of which are in the transport area in the seven year capital programme. There is no proposal to cut back on those projects and we intend to honour the capital programme no matter what happens. Overspending on the current expenditure side is modest in this year's account. There will not be much difference over the year. The difficulty will be on the income side which will be lower, but by how much is still a matter for debate.

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