Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The reason we are increasing taxation is we need to increase revenue from sources like income tax and other taxes in the future to meet the expenditure needs even where the Government has made expenditure savings this year for €4.3 billion. Let us leave that aside because that is just another way of the Deputy getting his message out to the doors on that issue.

I refer to the issue he asked about regarding the financial system. There has been decreased demand because of recession. We are involved in objective analysis to see in what way we can assist business in order that banks provide more credit than is currently being provided. We are working to achieve that. The NAMA initiative is part of that proposition. It is how impaired assets are taken off the balance sheets of the banks so that we can get them back to the core franchise of doing business and providing credit for businesses customers and citizens going about their ordinary business.

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