Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Does the Minister agree that gross public expenditure only reduced by less than 3% between 2008 and 2012? Does he agree that capital expenditure during the same period has reduced by almost 50% or ¤4.3 billion? Does he agree that, based on Department of Finance figures, there have been between 43,000 and 75,000 job losses as a consequence of the reduction in the capital expenditure, which is a softer political option? What happened to benchmarking?