Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I am sharing time with Deputy Ó Caoláin.

The Finance Bill is the most important Bill that is debated in this Chamber. It is about how the Government decides to spend taxpayers' money and it affects everybody. There are very few Bills about which one can say that. I listened to the Government Deputies and while I agree with some of what they said, I would probably place a different emphasis on the Finance Bill and how we approach it as public representatives. Deputy Mulcahy stated that the economy is the envy of the world and is much admired. I cannot disagree with that and we have had enough delegations from different countries asking us how exactly we did it. I do not think anybody knows exactly how we did it, but I feel it was a combination of factors and things coming together at a particular time in the world economy that gave us our boom.

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