Thomas Byrne

So at the very start of this fuel shock, I think the Taoiseach and others identified that the position of hauliers was not just...

extremely difficult for them.

But if they had those difficulties, then it becomes extremely difficult for the rest of the country in terms of people who work in exporting industries, which is a huge part of the country.

So decisions were made to do that.

There were decisions made around agricultural diesel as well.

And then subsequently, a decision made to bring in a rebate for agriculture.

Because they have to have some support in order to keep those industries going, which are absolutely essential, as I said, haulage and agriculture in terms of the food supply industry.

to keep them going through the difficulties that they had.

So significant supports were brought in for them and I would encourage farmers and contractors and indeed hauliers to look at the details of that.

Just to be clear, they're going to have a window during May, particularly on the farming side and the contractor side, to apply for this support.

Yeah, and that is a very, very serious issue.

We've seen before when electricity prices in particular went up dramatically during the Ukraine, the invasion of Ukraine, because of the price of natural gas, that we did bring in supports.

And I certainly can't rule out the bringing in of those types of supports again if that proves necessary.

I think that is necessary.

I think we have to look...

at all of the at the situation of people who are clearly struggling struggling to pay bills and we need to make sure first of all that people are in employment and that we use every lever possible to reduce those bills and i know when i say it that we need to continue really hard in the direction of renewables people say oh we can't do that but we have to do it because it's the only way to remove the dependencies that we have on on the middle eastern

I'm certainly not going to rule it out, but I think it would be a case that it would be at budget time because the government can't just keep changing its position every few weeks.

What I would say on that is, first of all, I mean, the reduction in the VAT for the hospitality sector is something that's welcomed by that sector.

I mean, that was a program for government commitment.

Fine Gael obviously had it in their manifesto, it was negotiated and it was agreed to as part of the program for government commitment.