Brenda Power

Good morning.

You're very welcome to the show.

Let's have a look at the front pages first before we meet our panel.

The front of the Sunday Independent is a bit like, you know, there's letters to the Irish Times.

I heard a cuckoo.

Is this a record?

So we're having the budget discussion, it seems.

I think possibly because Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael are trying to, like, you know, get in early with the...

With the good bits.

So Conal Thomas has tax cuts and targeted measures for older people on the cards, the Taoiseach says.

New cost of disability payment.

The Taoiseach is talking about alleviating pressures on family.

Another instrument is social protection, various payments, people on low income, pensioners.

childcare would be in the frame as well in terms of what we can do.

Then Social Protection Minister Derek Leary is here as well.

People living alone, particularly in their older years on fixed incomes, we need to support them more.

And he does make that point that I know a lot of...

older people make, which is that if you have two people in a household and then one of them dies, you're dealing with largely the same fixed costs, but in a lot of cases, like their fixed income is kind of more or less halved.

So anyway, that's the budget.

We'll talk about that for the next six months.