Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

Harold Wilson said a week is a long time in politics. Six months is a very long time in the life of the European economy. One must recall that 12 months ago, we were not in the programme. Look at all that has happened since then. The Government has been in office for approximately seven months and look at all that has happened since then. To project to 2015 and to ask me to give a view on what would happen is not reasonable. We can speculate but it is of no practical impact.

On Deputy Boyd Barrett's question on whether we take cognisance of declining growth in the European economy, of course we do. We have readjusted our growth figures down from €2.5 billion to €1.6 billion for 2012.

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