Gerard Howlin

She's a convincing candidate.

She's a councillor down there in the city.

The city vote counts for a lot in Galway West.

Yes, indeed.

And I suppose this is something that kind of like seems to be borne out of by the by-elections, but really like it's been something the government have been kind of talking about in relation to in relation to the budget overall, because there wasn't, I suppose, a direct package for workers, families, maybe in the last

in the last budget, but there will be presumably something they're touting, I suppose, in this upcoming budget.

And I suppose that also comes from the fact that one of the big pieces of the last budget was the VAT rate cut for hospitality, not all hospitality, some, that's coming in in July and how much, I think that's €680 million that's going to cost the government bringing down that rate.

And so that was kind of one of the big set pieces that...

particularly Fine Gael, wanted to get over the line.

And now we're seeing that, I suppose, they kind of see the need to help people out on a more basic level.

And actually, one thing I suppose that might have struck a chord with people during the by-elections was this promise or a campaign pledge from many of the opposition, including the Social Democrats,

For one, I think Labour also mentioned it about a grocery rebate or like a grocery credit because people are struggling with buying groceries.

And then also, I mean, even the Fianna Fáil candidate, John Stevens, mentioned it to me that he wanted to see something like that.

So you can see there.

And then also, as I mentioned, the Social Democrats had that

But they also were making pledges around bringing childcare down to 200 euro and a 400 euro energy credit for low income households.

You'd actually struggle to see where they differ from the government on those points because the government are trying to bring down the cost of childcare to 200 euro.

And it was, you know, seen to be kind of a misstep that they didn't make any roads towards that in the last budget.

It was a programme for government commitment that they were going to try and bring the cost of childcare down.

They haven't.