Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

Not very many people, if anyone, did. There are many who, with hindsight, point to this, that or the other to suggest that they were saying it all along but that was certainly not the case in the years preceding the crisis. There were risks but a confluence of the realisation of all of those risks was not regarded as being worthy of short odds. The international and domestic problems that hit us subsequently were very severe and we are still contending with them. The OECD was not on its own in saying that, and its having said that does not take away from other good work it has done, including the work we are considering in these questions.

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