Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

We must help, to the greatest possible extent, those who are losing jobs or who cannot find work. That is what we are doing and will continue to do.

We are in discussions with the social partners about developing and evolving programmes, as we did in the 1990s when many schemes were developed. However, we must be straight with the people. We cannot grow jobs without taking whatever decisions are necessary to return to growth in the mid term. That is not possible and will not happen. We must take the necessary decisions now. We learned the lesson that deferring difficult decisions on public finance merely prolongs the problem.

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