Rising Divorce Rates Leaves People Without Pension Savings

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The Last Word with Matt Cooper 8 min 3 speakers 5 chapters transcribed 2 months ago
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

Gary O'Hanlon 0:00
The last word with Life Pharmacy. Over 100 local pharmacies nationwide that are always here to help. Life Pharmacy. Live better together.
Matt Cooper 0:10
Charlie Weston, personal finance editor of the Irish Independent is with us. I was just talking to Minister for Public Expenditure, Jack Chambers, about... cost of living measures, and particularly excise duties on petrol and diesel. As one listener points out, already because of what's happening in the Gulf, petrol's 8 cent a litre more expensive this week. Another listener says, if you add 28 in excise duties, 28 cents, back on to 179, you'll be up to 207 for petrol by Christmas.
Charlie Weston 0:40
You will be over two and the government are not going to be able to let that happen.

What is the programme and who is the personal finance guest?

Charlie Weston 0:43
Two euros a litre is usually psychological in this country. I don't think they're going to get to start gradually increasing back up the excise duties to where they were in September. We're seeing the crude price and that determines, the crude price determines the price, irrespective of the fact that we get a lot of our oil from Norway and the UK. The price is set internationally and the crude price of oil is up to $94. And that's a 30%, 30% increase in the last six weeks. Is that a six week high? So that's going to get passed on. The petrol and diesel that's being sold at the moment is stuff that was bought two to three weeks ago from refineries. The stuff that's going to come in in the next week or two is going to be more expensive.
Charlie Weston 1:26
My advice would be to fill up the car. You know, it's unfortunately, there's also an issue around the diesel supplies in Europe. The diesel storage amounts are low. There's what the industry calls a diesel squeeze. So diesel could be under a bit of pressure. It's through a whole load of things. It's obviously, you know, the renewed fighting between the Americans.
Matt Cooper 1:48
And now the involvement of the Houthis as well.
Charlie Weston 1:50
Saudi Arabia may be affected as well. You know, you also have the Russians wiping out, sorry, the Ukrainians wiping out Russian refineries. Europe doesn't get very much fuel from Russia, but that does affect the price as well.
Matt Cooper 2:02
Because it's fuel that's going to other parts of the world who should no longer be going there, and that bids up the price for the available fuel.
Charlie Weston 2:09
It is, exactly, Matt. And as you know, we have to import everything on tankers into this country, so there's a risk premium now for these tankers, there's insurance costs have gone higher, and shipping costs have increased. So all of that's translating into higher prices. So, you know... We're okay at the minute, but you'll start to see it creep up and we could be looking at higher prices. I do not see the government being able to move back to a situation where they'll have to delay touching these excise duties.
Matt Cooper 2:38
So they're going to have to put a contingency fund in place for that. I suppose the one thing they'll want to avoid is going back to cost of living, the energy supports that they gave previously and go for more targeted measures.
Charlie Weston 2:49
They keep saying they're going to go for more targeted measures. You know, we've already seen Electric Ireland in particular putting up prices in July. Now, that was a catch-up because they hadn't put them up in last November, October. So we haven't seen anybody else yet increasing them. But European gas supplies, and gas is the key here because we use so much of it to generate electricity in this country. European gas prices are double the pre-conflict levels, plus gas storage levels are very, very low in Europe because the people who fill these gas storage units were waiting for prices to come down. They haven't come down sufficiently. So that affects the price as well. So that doesn't look good either in terms of electricity costs and natural gas, if you're lucky enough to have natural gas in your home.
Matt Cooper 3:31
And as I was putting to the Minister as well, one and a half billion doesn't get you an awful lot when it comes to income tax, does it?
Charlie Weston 3:38
Not at all, no. You know, and it's very important that people... There was no changes to the credits, for example, the tax credits, the amount you can earn before...

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