Does he not think it is about time he stopped distorting recent economic histroy and acknowledged that the first Coalition Government, of which he was a member, borrowed relatively more than any Government before or since? Would he also accept that in the year in which he has been in office, the public debt will go up by £2 billion, which is an all-time record? In the interests of young people in particular will he for heaven's sake get down to doing his job and stop trying to score frittery political debating points.

I will allow an answer to that question, and then I will pass on to the next question.

I will leave it to a more impartial observer than I am to decide who is scoring political points.

That is the worst of having a debate at Question Time.

The reality is that the problem we have inherited will not go away easily——

Until the Taoiseach goes away.

Once public expenditure has been pushed up from 36 per cent to 50 per cent of GNP once you have accumulated an extra £3½ billion of foreign borrowing over that period, which has to be repaid and remunerated, you face problems which make any effective action extremely difficult. That will remain the case for several years to come. It will take at least as long as it took to create the mess to resolve it, if not longer. It will remain a problem. Next year alone the Government will have to find £1 billion in order to pay interest on the foreign debt and to repay foreign debt incurred in the period of office of the preceding Government as a result of that increase in public expenditure.