Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

To stick to the point that Deputy Gilmore raised, the strategy is very clear. We will take whatever measures are necessary to have a sustainable budgetary strategy going forward. We will seek more value for money on the current side. We were already talking about moderating the rate of increase in current expenditure anyway because we want to continue to apply priority investment on the capital programme. That is the basic strategy that we have devised and will continue to work on, based on the data as it emerges. We are only half way through this year. We will take whatever assessments can be taken on the basis of up-to-date data next week and proceed from there. There will be continuing forecasts from various finance houses about how they ultimately see the performance of the economy this year which we will only find out about when the outturn emerges in December.

See this speech in context