Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

It is not really our role to design policies to help people. We recognise that the fundamental issue is that a lot of people are facing very difficult situations, in particular with heating as we go into the winter, given the cold weather. Our advice is focused on making sure that the support that is provided is sustainable. That is the advice that we gave on the budget. We think the Government struck an appropriate balance. Essentially, all of the additional cash resources in the budget were dedicated to providing a range of supports. In terms of core spending, the Government also had a very large package of temporary measures. If we look at the difference between 2023 and 2022, we will see that work by the ESRI suggests that households have largely been compensated for the inflation that is expected. They are still worse off than they were a year ago because it does not fully compensate for the inflation that we have seen this year. There obviously has been a very considerable effort in that regard. We could argue about whether it is too much or too little or if it could have been targeted or done differently, but that is not something the council looks at. In terms of the overall allocation of resources and its sustainability, and not leading to a second round of inflation, which would have made things even worse, this seems like the appropriate balance to us.