Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

We will eventually become good at it. The Minister need not worry. In fairness, the Minister is a master at it. In spite of all the pointers, the Minister is now saying that nobody could have expected this; it was the Lehman Brothers collapse that was responsible for the whole thing. We never hear a word about the economy being overheated or our reliance on the building industry, although everyone in the country was talking about it.

I remember one famous occasion on which one of the Minister's predecessors, Mr. Charlie McCreevy, gave his view on economics: "When I have it, I spend it and when I don't, I don't." When he said that, he was sitting in the same seat the Minister is sitting in now. That is some basis for a rational way to run a country - when I have it, I spend it. Surely that is exactly what the Government did.

As far back as November 2005, the IMF explicitly warned the then Minister for Finance that "house price over-valuation in Ireland [was] large compared to other countries" and could not be explained solely by economic fundamentals. Just two months after that, the then Minister assured the national mortgage conference that there was "a consensus that the Irish mortgage and housing market has been strong over an extended period of years because the economic fundamentals of the Irish economy have been strong." That is some statement. I assume that, and other similar statements, is to what Professor Patrick Honohan referred.

If there was any honesty in the Government, the Minister would make available every item of information so that the Irish people can make a judgment.

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