Cónal Thomas
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Cónal Thomas’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Well, as Mary Regan, the Irish Independent's reporting this morning, um, the Just Transition Commission has effectively wrote to the government and said that scrap the fare hikes that are due to come in in January.
Remember a couple of months ago there was kind of uproar about this, the national transport authority is going to be increasing fares from January around the country, leap fares, et cetera, et cetera.
And the Just Transition Commission has effectively said to scrap them and use some of the uh unspent carbon tax.
funding to to keep them at the level they are.
The problem in all of this it comes down to what's effectively called the PSO, the public service obligation, right?
That's used to fund those reduced fares throughout the country.
It's used to fund likes of rural local links.
And it's been growing every year.
And it seems to be every year there's this standoff between the Department of Public Expenditure and the Department of Transport over the level of that.
Now it was nearly a billion euro last year to fund this.
This is a bit of a shot across the bow, I suppose, of the government because they're effectively saying the Just Transition Commission is saying, well, effectively, if you're going to spend 100 million euro on excise cuts, well, why are you then hiking public transport fares?
On the other, there's a balance in all of this because already we're hearing around what they may do on fuel and home heating.
So they may, you know, we we've heard talk about this cutting the carbon tax on kerosene.
That's going to cost the exchequer as well.
So it's this balancing act between the
Department of Public Expenditure and the Department of Transport of how this can go ahead.
This budget, I suppose, Claire, has become well earlier in the summer it seemed to be let's reward hard work by cutting income tax and that will still happen.
It's very much now become a cost of living budget.
And how the government are going to frame that's going to be really important in the next week and that's where the big battle's going to be.
Well the the question then becomes as well, we've already heard, and this is what's worrying, I think, the likes of, say, the Just Transition Commission and the Green Party.
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