Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

-----for consumers and businesses. Those are the facts of the situation, and despite all of the contentions to the contrary, the Government is determined to make sure that we effectively restructure the banking system to bring that about.

This country has an employment strategy and is based on the fact that we must first bring order to our public finances, something that is glazed over by the Opposition, and that we must close the gap between expenditure and income. We have also seen a recent FÁS and ESRI study published that projects the creation of 250,000 jobs between now and 2015.

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