Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

What number of special needs assistants and extra teachers should we not have put into schools? Those reflect the increases in expenditure. We are also proceeding with a capital programme that is 12% higher than last year and which we would like to maintain. We are confident in increasing the productive capacity of the economy when the upturn comes. An upturn in the world economy will come if not next year, the year after or the following year, and we will be ready for that upturn. In the meantime we must manage the economy and our finances sensibly in a way that maintains and sustains services as we have built them up.

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