Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

When I was Minister for Finance I refused to take some of the options offered by Fine Gael such as the abolition of stamp duty in order to revive the property market. I was the person who refused to take all that advice from Fine Gael which it regarded as an opportunity to win middle class votes in the general election. Those are the facts and I will not take the revisionism that Deputy Kenny is coming up with and I will not take the attack on my personal integrity that is part of Deputy Kenny's whole strategy for dealing with this matter.

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