Ellen Coyne

Okay, Thomas Byrne.

Sure, so this is obviously a fairly big concession by the government that even after digging three quarters of a billion euro out of its surplus to deal with the response to the fuel protests, obviously that is not enough.

So Simon Harness kind of flagged this in a speech to the EPP in Dublin on Saturday and then was talking about it further yesterday.

He is now trying to move to a position where either one-off grants or accessible finance would be made available on a one-off basis to people

If they want to try to pursue more expensive, but ultimately more sustainable heating and car options, so like electric cars, installing heat pumps in your house, or maybe trying to switch to HVO, which is hydro-treated vegetable oil.

And in some scenarios that can be used to heat your home.

Obviously, the backdrop to all of this is that the government is conscious that despite what everyone said in 2022 about the dangers of relying on

volatile oil and energy markets that we have no control over.

Europe has kind of made the same mistake again, has found ourselves in the same position.

And it seems that the government is doubling down on trying to pursue just transition policies.

We know we're not that popular.

But the idea is that if people are able to switch to more sustainable energy models, then that is obviously cheaper than throwing three quarters of a billion euro at an economy that overly relies on carbon fuel for heating and transport.

Well, I think, I mean, so obviously we know it's going to cost €22 million to have that delay from the 1st of May until the 14th of October.

That was a direct result of the fuel protests.

But I think the interesting context of this is that the fuel protests have kind of given rise to more criticism of the carbon tax than ever before.

And the government used to cling to that as a kind of like infallible promise that they would never walk the carbon tax back.

And I think there's probably a realisation in government that by the time we get to October, unfortunately,

there's a non-zero chance that this war will be continuing.

And as they learned after the one-off measures brought in after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it's very difficult to kind of walk these things back.

So the government might be bracing for another row or another pushback when it tries to bring in that carbon tax increase that had been due on the 1st of May that is now pushed towards Budget Day.