Simon Harris

And we've worked too hard as a people to get to this position of relative economic stability.

So the very honest answer is it doesn't have a material impact on our budget arithmetic for the time ahead because of the running of a surplus.

So surplus has been used as a kind of dirty word in Irish politics.

I tell you, thank God we have one because as a result of having one, we were able to, for want of a better phrase, intervene in the last couple of weeks and basically make the surplus a little bit smaller, not have to borrow any money on the market.

If you look at the UK...

they had to go, they brought in a smaller package for their citizens and they had to borrow for it and got charged 5%.

So we've been able to put in place this temporary one-off targeted package using the surplus.

That allows us to stick to what we call our medium term plan in terms of the budget.

And it will allow us to deliver a plan that would both invest in public services in October's budget, but also be able to try and reduce taxes on working people too.

So I genuinely think people listening to this programme are less fixated as to what we reduce and more concerned about what it means for their family.

So what I definitely know is this, there's too many people in Ireland who play by the rules, work really hard and find they're struggling to get by, let alone get ahead.

They're my priority in the budget.

And we have to, we cannot approach a cost of living crisis by thinking the only answer is social welfare or subsidisation.

One of the things you can do during a cost of living crisis, one of the things you can do anyway to help make sure work pays, is allow people to keep a little bit of their own money.

So there will be an income tax package, a personal income tax package.

The composition of it, what you do in the USC, what you do on thresholds, what you do on rates, what you do on tax credits, they're all, as you'd expect, a matter for proper detailed discussion across government.

Well, I'm not ruling that out.

What I'm saying is, though, I'm not fixating with which tax do I reduce.

What I am fixated about is how do we help?

We call them different things at different times in politics.