Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

In regard to the building industry, as I have outlined, it was always our budgetary strategy to provide for increased capital spend from the public capital programme in an effort not to replace but to alleviate the downturn that was coming in the residential construction sector in any case. The seismic change that occurred since last August when Lehman Brothers collapsed meant that the industry has now come almost to a halt.

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