Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Tá mise ag roinnt mo chuid ama leis an Aire Stáit, an Teachta Curran. Time and again the Opposition states the money was wasted in the past ten years, but the record is very different. In the past ten years we reduced the national debt, which was extraordinarily high after the 1983-87 coalition of Fine Gael and Labour. We dramatically reduced that until we had the lowest debt to GDP ratio among Europe 15, other than Luxembourg. We went further. We put a huge amount of money into the pension reserve fund, putting money aside for the future because we were aware that the rate at which money was coming into the Exchequer could not continue indefinitely. We put money aside for the rainy day. We spent money on improving services. In every school in the country one can find a large number of staff who would not have been there five, ten, 15 or 20 years ago. I remember when a three-teacher school was literally a three-teacher school. There was no support or ancillary staff. That has all changed dramatically.

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