Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

——of engagement by Government across all Departments for the purpose of having a sustainable budgetary strategy going into 2009 that will address the issues we need to address. Apart from this contention that there was some effort to fritter away resources, let us remind ourselves that we have been paying to invest in a capital budget out of current budget surpluses year on year under this Administration and previous Administrations, which confirms there was not a frittering away of money. Money was being used from current budget surpluses for productive purposes to build up the capacity of the economy. The proof of that is that despite not having growth in the economy in 2008, the economy is 30% bigger than it was in 2002 precisely because during the years from 2003 to 2007 we used the current budget surpluses for the purposes, in the main, of providing a capital programme which is greatly enhanced.

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