While I accept that there was, and still is, appreciation that matters were not as good as they were, there was certainly no appreciation that the Government was going to turn on its head everything it had been saying for the previous while and everything it had been doing for the previous two years. The Government has cynically manipulated the public finances. It is quite remarkable that, despite this fact, we are still not in a what one might term a crisis position. Much of the current "crisis" is of the Government's own making because of certain deliberate decisions it has taken and to which I referred during the budget debate and will not repeat now.