@Charlie: so what are you asking? For social welfare and other measures to be cut?

@Alan Richard Scott Jr.: Charlie voicing that middle income earners did get enough is not equating to a desire to reduce social welfare. How did you manage to come to that conclusion?

@Paolo Fandango: Surely most of Social Welfare is accounted for by State pensions? Plus the many people in dire need, many of whom aren’t well. Those are not “handouts” by any stretch. Plenty of people aren’t receiving any benefits as they haven’t recently paid enough PRSI, which contradicts his allegation. I’d say Charlie is lacking in imagination if they feel that everyone poorer than Charlie is somehow better off than Charlie.

@Shaun Gallagher: exactly Shaun – they’re not doing their job they’re just throwing money everywhere in a populist way.

@Paolo Fandango: Workers getting temporary payments, while social welfare recipients get a permanent one. Low wage earners get less than those who couldn’t be arsed to get a job when companies are crying out for staff. Funny how the governing parties suggest SF play with magic money tree economics. Yet time and time again find one growing at the back of Leinster House themselves.

@Peter McGlynn: 30 odd billion of that is directly associated with Covid payments.

@Shaun Gallagher: unfortunately capping energy costs is not feasible. It would be massively risky to do so too from a cost perspective if the war was to continue for a long time because alternatives are a long way from being in place. Yes this is a problem due to poor past planning, but we are where we are.

I appreciate its a huge issue but the way energy market pricing and investment in energy provision works it’s not a simple issue to fix

@Paolo Fandango: got to call bs on that, record breaking profits should not equal record breaking increases. Cap it with a 3-4% wiggle room for attracting new customers. Would still be profitable and would not be gouging all at the same time.

@Stephen Fitzgerald: financing, funding etc for renewable and alternative energy projects have all been designed funded and contracted etc with the promise of pegging supply price to that of gas.

There are tens of thousands of investors and other stakeholders that have strong recourse if these agreements are torn up. It’s a legal quagmire to solve, which is why price caps are a very hard thing to implement.

It’s almost like the bank guarantee way back where there was a decision to burn the bond holders. If we burn the source of new energy capital etc then we shoot ourselves in the foot.

You also can’t cap gas cos it’s actual wholesale price is through the roof. Well in theory you can but the tax payer will pay the difference because wholesalers won’t just sell it at capped costs.

@Peter McGlynn: but people were against austerity after the crash so it was either borrow while we ran a deficit after our tax take fell off a cliff(austerity light) or make the necessary adjustments in one year to balance the budget (full on austerity). I would agree that we’re saddling future generations with debt, it’s manageable now and only about 60% of GDP but if a few of the big multinationals left we could be snookered with the debt/GDP rules on borrowings.

@Peter McGlynn: most of that debt is govt mismanagement of public finances over the years. 2b€ hospital, 4b€ broadband plan, throwing money at HSE…….etc. Bailout was 64bn€. NAMA should be returning an surplus of 4b€ and bonds were paid back by 2017. Bank shares have returned a surplus of 2b€ from BOI with other banks shares to sell off.

@Paolo Fandango: meant to add that windfall tax is best at present until at an EU level we decouple gas from other energy prices

And to be fair there will be a large portion of money taken from ESB which is kinda all we can get our hands on for now

@Paolo Fandango: Windfall tax taken and returned with extra in the form of ‘once off’ payments is not the answer, regulating the price through the regulator is. These companies have to apply to the regulator for increases – the regulator can and should say no. Hoping current and future government will invest properly in renewables is just a fallacy. Our green party is green in name only.
Offsetting (paying for) carbon footprint should be banned, it solves nothing. Penalising hard stretched people won’t get them on board when the cost of change is so punative. Even with grants its still far too expensive. Don’t get me started on lithium mining….. batteries the dieselgsate of tomorrow, smdh

@Paolo Fandango: would you use your real name and picture.. I bet if you did we would all probably recognise you!!

@Tom Kelly: I won’t Tom. Because having anonymity is my right and something i wish to maintain when I am communicating on the internet.

But if you played the ball and not the man you might have a sensible argument to what I am saying. I don’t like the cost of stuff the very same as you, but I base my understanding and rationale in these costs on actual data and an understanding for how they work in the real world. This translates into not complaining , but trying to have useful discussion that is based on real understanding (where at all possible I can).

@Stephen Fitzgerald: I fully agree with you Stephen.

Regulating prices is the right thing, but we can’t with gas at present due to supply / demand issues driving up costs. And with EU level price binding for energy to gas were kinda stuck until that is tackled at an EU level.

But the masses want a few quid of respite now. And that’s what the government will do to win votes.

@Paolo Fandango: We can, we can change legislation to do it. Before you say it’ll take too long, we were able to change and create a massive amount of legislation during the pandemic (in lightning quick time too).Why should this be any different. This money being handed straight to these companies does not represent value for money for the tax payers. Its appalling the waste, all at the expense of the very people they’re faux helping. It would remind you of Trumps America, his most avid supporters were the very ones he was hurting the most.

@Stephen Fitzgerald: respectfully I disagree. Legislative changes for covid were conducted using different frameworks that would not be compatible in this case. You could explore this link for more info on what frameworks were utilised and the use case is massively different than todays issue of energy costs https://www.ihrec.ie/app/uploads/2021/02/Irelands-Emergency-Powers-During-the-Covid-19-Pandemic-25022021.pdf

Also, the ramifications of forcing price caps will not only cost the tax payer a heap, it will massively impact investment and advancement of non fossil fuel efforts here and completely destabilise it as an industry if companies and other supply side stakeholders see governments ripping up frameworks. It could very easily destabilise the industry which is the worst thing possible given how perilous it all is at present.

@Paul Clancy: no – the debt was already €245bn in 2020. Besides the economy bounced back and it paid for itself.

@Getard Lanslanger: As opposed to the opposition who would be doing from the goodness of the hearts ?

@Getard Lanslanger: They have well payed spin doctors.

@Fifty Shades of Sé: It’s due to the massive revenue Pharma and Tech companies made during lockdowns. Its not gonna be as high over next 12 months.

@Fifty Shades of Sé: the 15% rate is not in effect yet, and that will reduce our corporate tax intake because under the new rules, profits will be taxed in the countries where they are earned (which is mostly not Ireland). We’ll have a higher corporate tax rate, but a smaller pool of revenue on which to tax corporate profits.