Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The delusion is very much on the part of the Fine Gael spokesperson on enterprise and employment who suggested that the changes we see in the economy currently mean we are back into the 1980s and worse. The ESRI does not say that. It says, that despite the negative short-term forecast, the economy is better placed to emerge from the current difficulties than it was in the past. The ESRI's medium-term assessment of the economy is that it has the capacity to grow at an average annual rate of approximately 4% if we take the right decisions now. That is what we intend to do.

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