Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I wish the former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, well. As I said in my statement yesterday evening, he was a good friend of Ireland who showed a strong commitment to the implementation of the agreements of which both his government and ours were co-guarantors and I wish him and his wife and family well for the future. I thank him for his excellent work in many respects. In our dealings with him, we found him to be an excellent colleague to work with. I wish Mr. Cameron and Mr. Clegg well in the formation of a new government and I look forward to meeting the British Prime Minister in due course to build on the good relationships that successive governments have been able to establish between the Irish and British Administrations in recent times in the hope that we can continue to co-operate and work together on items of common interest.

With regard to the matter raised by Deputy Kenny, today's media comments on the EU proposals to improve budgetary policy co-ordination are not based on published EU documents. I do not want to comment further on the specifics of articles in the press. Ireland has laid out a multiannual plan with budgetary targets for the coming years. The plan is to reduce the general government balance to below 3% of GDP by 2014 and it has been welcomed and approved by the EU Commission. Much has been achieved on the public finances as a result of decisive Government action since this issue first arose. We have stabilised the deficit with decisive actions. It would have ballooned to 20% of GDP had we not taken the actions we took since coming into office. Fiscal discipline is an important factor in bringing growth and, ultimately, jobs back into the economy and the prospect of a net increase in job creation is based on us continuing with the multiannual plan that has been implemented.

Last year, Fine Gael suggested the cut should have been of the order of €5.4 billion originally and it should be €3.5 billion for 2011. I note from its latest statement that it is suggesting the cut should be just €2 billion for next year.

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