Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The Minister for Finance will make a statement when the figures are published today. The Government will make its decisions and the Minister will come to the House.

There is an effort being made in some quarters to suggest we have to engage in wholesale disruption of services all over the place and we must make up the €3 billion by the end of this year. That is not the position. Nobody is suggesting, in any of the more pessimistic reports and analyses, that we should do that because it would be wrong to do so. In good times we build surpluses and in more difficult times we will have some deficits.

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