Live updates: Bertie Ahern - pain of financial crisis 'breaks my heart'
Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has defended his record as Taoiseach at the Banking Inquiry.
The ex-Fianna Fáil leader, who served three terms as Taoiseach, follows appearances by Brian Cowen and Charlie McCreevy who spoke about their periods as Taoiseach and Minister for Finance.
Ahern announced he was stepping down as Taoiseach in April 2008, after almost 11 years in the job. A few months later, the economy had crumbled and the bank guarantee was introduced.
The inquiry has already been told that a crisis unit had been set up within the Department of Finance, just months after Ahern won his third term as Taoiseach, to consider the prospect of a bank guarantee.
Bertie Ahern admitted he "got some things wrong" as Taoiseach, and said the pain of the financial crisis "breaks his heart".
He says all international advice before the economic crisis was that there would be a soft landing of the construction boom.
He added that the boom was not "squandered", and that he was proud of many of the things his governments achieved.
Bertie Ahern has listed the achievements of government during his tenure as Taoiseach. He said he always wanted to improve the quality of life of the country's citizens.
He said: "(The) rising tide was essential in lifting hundreds of thousands of our people
out of poverty, to reversing forced emigration, to significantly increasing pensions and child benefit, to modernising schools, health facilities, roads and communications infrastructure around our country, and in creating well paid jobs for our young people at home.
"This represented positive change in the lives of many people and, despite the recession, a lot of this progress is still there, benefitting thousands of our citizens. I am glad that government allocated huge amounts of money in this period into regenerating traditional areas of poverty such as Ballymun, Fatima Mansions in Rialto, and parts of Limerick, Cork, Waterford and other cities.
"I am glad we put money into the islands, improving the electricity supply, the sewage system, and building new piers.
"Throughout the country, people now drive on better and safer roads. The motorway network that Government supported during my tenure has cut journey times and is a vital economic and social artery for our people. People also travel on better trains. Our schools and hospitals have more staff working in better buildings. All the time, as Taoiseach, what I wanted to do with
budgets was to improve the quality of life for ordinary people and to provide services that our country did not have before.
"Those who say we squandered the boom forget that in my time as Taoiseach we actually recorded budget surpluses in 10 of our 11 budgets. We balanced sustained increases in spending with the need to reduce our national debt. As a result, Ireland paid over a billion euro less every year in interest payments."
He also paid tribute to the work done by Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan and said he admired the effgorts of the curret Government to tackle the financial crisis.
You can watch proceedings live here:
Bertie Ahern has told the Banking Inquiry that the committe should take "due recognition of the information that was available" at the time of the economic crisis, "when the decisions were being made to counteract the retrospective narrative that has developed, with the benefit of hindsight, over the years since the crisis first began to manifest in 2008."
