Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
And you're very welcome to The Debrief. We're going to look back on some of the big stories of the week. And today I'm joined in the studio by tech editor with The Irish Independent, Adrian Weckler. Journalist and consumer columnist with The Irish Examiner, Katrina Redmond is here. And school principal and host of If I Were the Minister for Education podcast, Simon Lewis.
And you're all very welcome to... to the programme. Thank you for being with us. So we heard this week that households are facing around ā¬2,000 in additional costs in bills, everything from food to insurance and of course energy going up.
Chapter 2: What are the biggest stories of the week discussed in this episode?
So the question is, should people be given more help to do things like install solar panels? Adrian, I'll come to you first on that one.
Yeah, well, I have a very strong view on this. And the answer to your last question is yes, I think it's an absolute no brainer. Start with solar panels. So there's about one hundred and seventy seven thousand homes in Ireland out of the one point two million homes that can take solar panels that have solar panels. Now, they are the people who could afford to spend between seven thousand dollars.
and ā¬15,000 roughly to put them on. They got the SEAI grant of between ā¬1,800 and ā¬3,000. It's ā¬1,800 now. They're the ones who could afford it, who are now benefiting from, you know, ā¬150 electricity bills, ā¬100 electricity bills, while the people who couldn't afford to do that or weren't motivated to do that are now getting ā¬500 electricity bills. It is a no-brainer.
And all that money that we heard about this morning that has been collected.
532 million euros for the Climate Action Fund. Which was collected on a 2% levy, which is sitting in government coffers, which wasn't spent. So it's a no brainer. People have different views on solar and they're in the weeds arguments about the origin of the panels and the contribution they make to the overall footprint for the ordinary household. And not every household can take solar.
But for the ordinary household that can take solar, it is absolute no-brainer to put panels on.
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Chapter 3: How are households impacted by rising costs this week?
And it's incomprehensible why the subsidy is only ā¬1,800 and why the government doesn't roll out.
Yeah, especially if we want to try and get ahead, Simon, of this increase in costs that we're all going to be facing now, ā¬2,000 is the estimate. You've done this, have you? Have you done the retrofit?
Yeah, we're actually in the process of it right now in our own house. We applied for that one stop shop scheme and we were lucky enough that our house is eligible for it. So we're sort of in the process of getting solar panels into the house. We're moving from our oil heating to a heat pump, getting the doors, the door done.
So it's, you know, we're very lucky that we were able to afford to do that.
So how was the process?
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Chapter 4: Should the government provide more support for solar panel installations?
Was it was it complicated?
No, like really, really simple. We rang around the various companies. Someone came to our house and told us what we needed to do. And we just have to wait now for them to be ready.
And do they look after the application process for the grants then as well for you? Absolutely.
Basically, yeah, everything, everything. It's it's been really straightforward, probably the most straightforward thing we've ever done in our house.
And hopefully you'll get to the point before the winter where you'll be saving this winter on your bills, which is where, Katrina, everybody would would want to be. But people, some people will not be able to do that.
Yeah, and I think this ā¬2,000 cost per family that we're talking about here, I think it's really important to remember that there are people in middle to higher range salaries who can absorb it by dropping some of the non-essential purchases. But the families who are on the lower income range, they're the families who can't adapt and adopt a ā¬2,000 hit to their finances.
I would argue most people in the middle can't afford to either.
No, and I think that's very true, because when you're committed to rent and to mortgage, it's very difficult to adapt your budget to take into account for an additional 2000 euro per year.
You're quite right. But you're also dropping things like, you know, after school classes for your children, which are maybe considered luxuries by some, but that it changes your standard of living intrinsically if you have to do that.
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Chapter 5: What is the process for retrofitting homes with solar panels?
Yeah, I think I'm somewhere in the same boat as the other two, except I kind of wonder, like, how do you mitigate against chancers? You know, I think we're... When it is a rule, particularly in Ireland, we try and find a way around it. And, you know, I don't know, maybe when people start sharing their tickets or their passes and things like that, it might be a small thing, but it is awful.
So using it as a commuter thing.
Kind of in a way it's a park and ride or a park and walk if you're lucky enough. But at the same time, you have to think about the people who are... You know, anyone who visits a hospital is not in a good place mentally. They're not having a laugh going in or anything like that. And we need to make that as easy as possible.
And if we had... I mean, if there's a way of guaranteeing the social responsibility of people who might abuse the system, maybe technology is the answer there. There's just... I wonder how it would work.
But as a taxpayer then, would you be happy for another 17 million to go into the health service to cover what the hospitals would lose?
I think so. You know, I don't have a problem with that. I think our hospitals are incredible. exceptionally important places and they keep us alive when we're not well. And if that's an extra couple of euro of tax, I think that's worth it.
Are you OK with that? Well, I don't know whether 17 million is the bigger picture price that we're talking about, because all of these car parks are administered by various different parking companies. So the 17 million is what the HSE has after the parking companies in the parking management has been paid for.
So that gap, that 17 million that has to be found, I think might be actually an awful lot more than that, might be double or even treble the amount.
OK, so we'd have to be ready, willing and able to cough up that as taxpayers to cover the cost of cutting back on parking. OK, to the tech companies, Adrian, I'm going to come to you on this one. They were asked in the Oireachtas committee this week whether social media is addictive and they pretty much said no. Are they right there?
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Chapter 6: How do rising costs affect families with low incomes?
Because you see social media at work in your house, as we all do, but also you run a social media consultancy company. So you're trying to keep us watching.
Yeah, well, yeah, try and keep the eyeballs on the clients that I work for. So, yeah, I do see it from both sides. But I also believe, yes, absolutely, it is addictive. I have no doubt in my mind that it is addictive. And I am also a Viroga youth leader to a group of young people who we specialise in tech. And I am forever explaining to them, be careful of what you do online, don't stay online.
Trying to persuade for a tech club, it's very unusual. I'm trying to persuade them to spend less time online, but when they do, do it in a mindful way. And I think that's a very difficult challenge. And I'm sure Simon has similar challenges at play because you kind of have to accept that young people are going to use social media today. But how do we teach them to use it in a responsible way?
And then the other side of the coin is, I often think we talk about young people an awful lot and the dangers around social media for young people today.
But an aspect of social media that we don't talk about an awful lot is the dangers of social media for older people who have not been familiar with the use of social media and are now presented with this amazing screen and these algorithms to go down. And I think it is an absolute disaster.
Anybody who has an older person in their life who uses social media knows you have to warn them to come and check with you to fact check information. You may have to reset their algorithm several times because they've gone down a rabbit hole. It's an extremely difficult space to be. So it's not just young people we have to be mindful of. Why are you agreeing it's a disaster?
Because the Gen Alpha and the Gen Z. So Gen Z we typically talk about as people in their 20s. Gen Alpha are the teens. They're the ones who are way savvier than the millennials and the Gen X. I'm Gen X. The millennials are the guys in the 30s and 40s. Like the gen, the gen alphas and the gen Z, the young folks, the kids are way savvier. They know how to limit their screen time.
They can sniff AI at 100 yards away. They can sniff disinformation, misinformation 100 yards away. They're the ones who turn off, who turn away from from AI. They're the ones using all the disposable cameras out on the streets.
We're the ones then.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of the ā¬2,000 cost per family discussed?
That sort of stuff. So, you know, I completely agree with.
OK, so, Simon, you have a great experience in this as the principal of a primary school. So is Adrian right that the younger people are really sensible and savvy?
I don't think they are. I think it's an area where they're not ready for that world. I mean, they're not ready to do a lot of things in the world of children. And when a parent hands them a smartphone, I mean, I think there's a New York Times kind of joke which says, you know, it's been lovely getting to know you. Now here's your first smartphone as a punchline. I'm going to lose them.
they sort of lose them. And I can even see it in my own job and I see it from speaking to other teachers and principals that you can tell, you can nearly tell physically the difference between children who have a smartphone of their own and those who don't.
What is the, tell me what the difference is.
It's mood a lot of the time, you know, because lack of sleep, tiredness, all that sort of stuff, just the innocence sort of gone a little bit because they're seeing things they're not ready for, all that sort of stuff. And it does really, really worry me.
You know, even to the point I've heard of school trips, overnight school trips being cancelled because they didn't have enough interest, because children weren't, didn't want to break their streak on Snapchat or something like that, you know, those kind of things. awful little things that just sound really distasteful.
I mean, you're talking about kids, though.
I'm talking about young kids who shouldn't be having smartphones in the first place. We know that, but they're getting them. You know, I think by the time they become teenagers, they're probably so they've probably gotten over it. But at the same time, that's who I mean.
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