Simon Harris

The second point is about €6.5 billion is expected to be transferred to the two funds we've established this year.

Now, these aren't rainy day funds or anything like that.

These are funds for infrastructure and climate adaptation in the first regard.

And secondly, a fund for what we call the Future Ireland Fund to pay for demographic pressures for people getting older and the likes too.

Having said that, despite those things, there is still obviously a buffer and that has allowed us put in place the largest or certainly the second largest package of any European Union member state to try and assist people with the energy crisis.

And you saw more details of that today, €750 million.

And we don't rule out taking further action in the time ahead.

In fact, no doubt if this crisis continues into the winter, an energy crisis in the winter is very different to one in the summer and will require further intervention should it be persisting.

So let me be really honest with you.

I think it annoyed a hell of a lot of people who voted for centrist parties, including my own.

And I've got to be honest about that because I've heard that from people around the country.

I've heard that from my own parliamentary party colleagues.

So that's the first thing.

I do want to acknowledge that.

The second thing, though, which is also important, is when we were planning the budget last October, Donald Trump hadn't bombed Iran.

inflation was due to be at 1.9%, a lot lower than it's now projected to being at.

And there was a view at the time, and I still, by the way, think it was probably the right thing to do for the country, that one budget in five, you concentrate your tax packages in other areas around housing and around supporting jobs.

We did that, if you remember, in the last government from 2020 to 2025, we had five budgets, four of them had personal income tax packages, one of them didn't.

But I absolutely want to assure your listeners

One of the reasons I decided to go to the Department of Finance when Pascal left was I really want to make sure that we make real progress on income tax, on personal tax and making sure work pays in the time ahead and there will be a personal income tax package in this year's budget.