Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

The Celtic tiger years, to some degree at least, benefited virtually everyone and enabled a great deal to be done for the country that would have been previously unimaginable because it was far beyond our resources. The national motorway network, begun in the late 1990s, which will be finished next year, is one instance of this.

The plentiful flow of capital taxes, stamp duty and corporation tax enabled us simultaneously to cut personal tax, vastly increase social service spending, and reduce the real value of the national debt to very low levels.

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