Fionnán Sheahan

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Yeah and on the one hand you had that criticism as well this week about Dar O'Brien and this Energy Affordability Task Force which was another one of these talking shops that was kind of set up in the early days of the coalition and around Christmas time it was reported it only had met three times and they've kind of put it on a war footing now right and so we would have seen the recent fuel supports announced the government going further Simon Harris hasn't ruled out energy credits

And on the other hand, you have this sort of, I was saying to someone earlier, it feels like James Lawless's student fees row comes earlier and earlier every year.

Because if you remember last year, it was in the summer, he said, I don't know, given the budget constraints, whether I'll be able to do a permanent reduction in student fees.

He did, it was €500.

And he came out this week, it was reported in the Mail on Monday that that's at risk because of the overspend in education, which we might get onto in a minute.

But then that was quickly walked back, saying it's still very much his priority.

And only after Fine Gael had come out and piled on top of him.

There's an element as well that Fianna Fáil have always kind of been against these sort of, you know, universal, they prefer the targeted measures.

Your point is valid that you say you can't come out and announce something that's going to happen to the budget in April, in May by maybe a general election year.

The question is, can you rule something out?

And we know as well who the former further higher education minister was.

It's now the finance minister, leader of Fine Gael, Simon Harris.

Just on the energy stuff, you're right, there is likely to be more in the budget because what we saw this week was more and more suppliers hiking their prices and that's going to continue and it's going to put massive pressure on the coalition.