MINISTER FOR Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin has insisted that the boom was not wasted. “We did many effective things that transformed the country and improved it considerably. This will help us deal with the significant difficulties we have now,” he told the Dáil.

“There is a tendency to rubbish all the achievements of that time. In 1997 our debt-to-GDP ratio was in the high 60s, and in the late 1980s it was close to 100 per cent. We brought that down to 20 per cent by 2007. It is now going back up because of the current difficulties.”

He said “we created a pension fund to which we allocated 1 per cent of GNP. If we did not have that pension fund we would not have been in a position to recapitalise the banks, for example, or take further measures.”

Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe said a concession on public sector recruitment had been made for “education whereby the numbers cap applying to teachers and special needs assistants” will only be applied after the start of the new school year in September 2009.