Michelle Murphy

those households is around and households, and we know kind of the households who are struggling, there's those on fixed incomes and a social welfare payment.

And for those groups, you need to look at benchmarking welfare to average, a percentage of average earnings.

Indexing then in terms of those households in employment that I referenced and those we'd say earning in around the 40,000 mark who don't benefit from the tax changes that we've had.

You need to look at things like tax credits for those groups.

Can you open up eligibility for some of the packages within the social protection system for that group?

Because ultimately, what we've seen over recent years, any kind of limited changes that they have experienced from tax and those just at that threshold haven't gained, they're still being faced with higher costs.

They're not feeling, I suppose, any relief.

So you need to look at the revenue that we have available and target it better.

Because I suppose the government have been very clear in the past two weeks that the two announcements they've made since March...

that come up to about 750 million.

The Minister for Social Protection and the Taoiseach were clear that that is going to come from the fiscal space that would have been available to them in October.

Well, yeah, I think I'm not sure how.

well thought through that was because it will hit in October as you said when people will be looking to heat their homes more also there will be another increase in October coming in the budget because it's legislated for until 2030 so that's two increases that are coming so that is a real concern because I suppose the benefit of the I suppose pause on carbon tax isn't going to be felt by those households now because we're coming into the summer and hopefully they shouldn't have to be

putting more heating oil into their tanks.

I suppose the flip side of that as well is the carbon tax that's been imposed, I'm assuming would have been used in budgetary calculations last year because it pays for a lot of things.

It pays for, you know, community retrofitting grants, but it also contributes to the fuel allowance, the qualified child payment, the living alone allowance, the working family payment, the acre scheme.

It contributes to EV grants, for example.

So another concern we would have is where is that money going?

going to come from now in the next four months that would have been factored in as to coming from that carbon tax increase.