Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

The accounts have their own mysteries and the methods of analysis and presentation which apply in respect of them are very different to those used by auditors and accountants involved in compiling general business and personal accounts. However, there is a way to read them if one can master it.

The Deputy must give me some credit on being the first Minister for Finance for many years to have approached the public finances from the perspective of beginning from a zero-budget scenario. When he takes that perspective in respect of our finances, he will quickly discover that a great number of accrued liabilities relating to salaries and welfare payments must be discharged in any year. If one aggregates those sums - the cost of payroll and of welfare - one is left with a figure that accounts for two thirds of the entire volume of public expenditure in the State.

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