Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

With regard to our budgetary policy, in good times we have surpluses and in more difficult and stringent times we have deficits. That is what is called a counter cyclical budgetary policy. That is how one is supposed to run the economy. As a result of running our economy in that way over the past decade, we have created hundreds of thousands of jobs.

There is a challenge for the economy today and we must work within sustainable budgetary macro-economic policy. We will do that. Fine Gael fought the last election on the basis it and Labour would spend more than we said we would. We said we would moderate the rate of current expenditure in the coming years on the basis of a more benign economic scenario, which was shared by the Opposition. Now that we have a global environment which has deteriorated, affecting everybody including us, we will take whatever corrective measures are necessary to ensure we have a sustainable budgetary policy. The question I have for the Opposition is: Will it support the corrective measures that are necessary to maintain macro-economic stability?

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