Michael Noonan (Limerick East, Fine Gael)

We will know the Commission's estimate of Irish growth on 29 November and we will not have to look at the runes or body language. The Minister's officials told me and my colleagues categorically that the correction they were seeking was €7 billion for 2011. That can be supported by the briefing they gave to other parties, who were briefed separately. The officials withdrew that figure afterwards under political pressure from the Government, including the Minister for Finance. I will repeat this inside and outside the House and take on any of them any day. The Minister should not have put pressure on his civil servants because we went to the Department of Finance to be briefed on the basis that the information given would not be filtered through the political side, in other words, by the Minister and his office. We found out subsequently that it was being filtered by him and his office because it was he who authorised the press statement that rebutted my figure, not the Secretary General of the Department of Finance.

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