Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

At the outset, as Minister I acknowledge the reality that many individuals and families are genuinely struggling at this point in time. Of course, I accept and recognise that point. I meet people in the course of my constituency work all the time and I know the lived reality of many. That is why we brought forward a budget with an overall package of new measures of €11 billion, of which €4 billion were once-off in nature and around €7 billion were permanent measures. I have to make the point that many of those measures, particularly on the permanent side, have only just kicked in recently, including the reduction in income tax of over €1 billion, the permanent increases in social welfare and the reduction in childcare costs, which has been warmly welcomed. Today we dealt with a memo on the elimination of hospital inpatient charges. There will be a further reduction in education costs later this year. Other measures will be implemented across the year in respect of the announcements we have made. I have to be consistent and say that there are a number of measures to be decided. They will be decided in the coming weeks. I will come back to the Deputy in a moment.

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