Simon Harris

I don't believe they're putting off doing it.

They can't afford to do it.

They can't afford to do it.

Yeah, or exactly, or trying to make, I mean, most people in this country, like forget the government, most people in this country want to do right by their family.

And if they can do something to reduce their own energy bills or reduce their own fuel bills, they will.

But there's a second point I made in that speech too, which is we have to look at a macro level how we can do that too.

Like the transition to renewable energy is still too slow.

No, what I'd say to people is we've made a range of very significant changes already in recent weeks, the benefit of which is being felt by people right across the country.

But I refuse to rule out exploring whether more can be done in this area, because if we were to rule that out now, Matt, the takeaway from that is simply that the only thing we're going to do is try and subsidise

energy bills in the winter and not make any further structural changes.

So we would be foolish to take that off the table.

And I don't think in the middle of the biggest energy crisis the world has seen, according to the International Energy Agency, we can take anything off the table.

The country is too dependent on fossil fuels

And we've got to get deadly serious about it.

Now, that's what I've said.

I said I believe there should be.

And I said I believe that should be considered as part of the next budget rather than simply considering how to subsidise people's electricity bills.

So two points on that.

I mean, firstly, we have seen very significant benefit already in terms of the investment in renewals.

And in fact, there were figures out by the CSO only this week, I think, that actually showed that one of the reasons that the knock on effect on electricity prices in Ireland has been much more muted is because of the strong wind energy output that we've already seen.