Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

In total, those savings amount to €4.8 billion in the full year. Quite apart from the tax increases, there were also significant expenditure savings which had to be factored into the budgetary equation.

With regard to the Deputy's second point, a policy announcement was made by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Lenihan, yesterday about how we can restore confidence in the economy and, in particular, protect jobs by quickly restoring a functioning banking system to provide sufficient credit for the demands of businesses as they deal with the difficulties of the recession this year and next. That policy announcement will allow much work to take place. Some work has already been undertaken in terms of due diligence with regard to the loan books of the covered institutions, but more work remains to be done in preparing legislation and so on. The National Treasury Management Agency will this afternoon outline how this will have a positive impact on Ireland's image in debt markets. What we intend to do is to engage in a process of work to isolate the problems that have been identified in the banking system and park them in the asset management agency, which will be the counter-party instead of the bank, although obviously the same obligations to repay will apply. The purpose of this is to ensure the banks themselves can access sufficient funds to meet the credit demands of the economy.

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