Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

——because we are in a much better position to deal with the situation than we were then due to our debt reduction policies in the course of the good times. The contention that windfall revenues were used on current expenditure is not correct. Over 70% of those windfall revenues, above what was projected, went towards debt reduction. Some 80% of our expenditure relates to health, education and social welfare. Will the Opposition detail what pension increases were too high for pensioners and what number of nurses who were put into frontline services was too many for the hospital service?

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