response to that? At face level, it has annoyed people an awful lot, this €3 increase in the living alone allowance.

Yeah, it means that the living alone allowance, it's the first increase in a number of years.

It means that the living alone allowance is now €25 per week.

But I would like to look at the measures in the round.

So the additional, not just look at the 25 euros per week living alone allowance, but also the increase in the social protection and the state pension.

Also the expansion of the means test disregard for qualifying for the fuel allowance.

Like that's gone up now to 641 euros per week.

What do you say? And she is pointedly saying the three euro increase is a joke and an insult.

What do you think? Is there a need for a referendum here, do you think, to copper fasten Irish neutrality and the triple lock?

Well, the first thing I'm going to say, I'm going to put Paul's point and Louise's point together.

When we're talking about misinformation and disinformation, Sinn Féin constantly say the triple lock neutrality protection, which is not what the triple lock is.

The triple lock is a legal mechanism which whereby we decide where our peacekeeping troops go.

Neutrality is a policy of the state.

It has been a policy of the state since the foundation of the state.

There is zero interest in the government in.

have that referendum?

Yeah

...

but there is two hundred and eight million for rural development as well as the fuel support for farmers and contractors has been extended.

That fertilizer support, that's somewhere in the region of forty-six point one fertilizer aid.

Um, there is ninety-three million going for TAMS.

There's fifty-four million going for the tillage, uh, sector in total, thirty million for tillage s-sustainability, forty million for the drawing corporation, ten million for protein aid, and then succession partnership relief is up from five thousand to ten thousand.

So I think that there is definitely, um, an acknowledgment, um, from the, a continued acknowledgment from the Department of Agriculture about how important rural, uh, life is, how important, uh, uh, the farming sector is to Ireland, and that, um, you know, that we really need to ensure that we're supporting succession, that we're making farming a, a, a viable l- uh, lifestyle, a viable, um, industry for our, for , and especially for, for us here in Carlow and Kilkenny.

Deputy Callahan, um, that's obviously going to be good news, I'm sure you'd suggest, for everybody in the country.

But I would, I would also temper that by saying it's not much of a response, or people will feel that it's not much of a response.

Well, well, well, yeah, now let me just-- I suppose it's, it is, and I know that people get fed over hearing the, the big figures, like eight point six five, eight point six five billion of a total package, but, like, there are benefits there for everyone.

The, the, the, the increase of the, the higher rate tax threshold, it, it being raised now to six and a-- to forty-six and a half thousand euros, that's probably going to bring somewhere in the measure of seven hundred and fifty euros benefit for a single worker that's making probably about fifty thousand euros a week now.

But we need to look at it in the round, because the intention of the budget was, which as many people have talked about, during an extremely turbulent period.

So we see workers are benefiting through tax.

A lower-paid worker is going to be benefiting through the minimum wage, a family through childcare, and also the measures in terms of, um, the excise, the continuation of the excise reductions in fuels.

We see renters benefiting through the re-rental tax credit.

So I'm looking purely at the household budget.