I think people assume straight away, Charlie, it was something that came in in the budget just a few weeks ago, but this was actually backdated to last year.

It is, yeah.

I mean, you know, what's confusing about this is, I suppose we were just still absorbing the budget and we were told lots of tax cuts, your tax bands are being widened, your tax credits are being increased, so that's a tax cut effectively.

But before that kicks in, that doesn't kick in until January, before that kicks in, People will have opened up a pay packet if you're paid monthly this month and seen, uh-oh, I've got less there than I should have got.

It's because PRSI, pay-related social insurance, went up again from the 1st of October.

Now, it's the third year in a row and it's going to go up again in 2028.

It keeps going up.

Again, there's that concern that when one makes the move, they're all going to move.

Charlie Weston is with us, personal finance editor of the Irish Independent, to bring us up to speed on some of the stories that you may not have seen and to give analysis on some of those that you have and one you may not have seen if you haven't yet been able to pick up the Indo or go on independent.ie. It's Charlie Weston's own analysis of potential energy hikes on the way, Charlie.

No good news here.

Sorry, Anton.

Sorry to hit people with this so early in the morning.

The problem here is wholesale electricity costs are way up.

They've nearly doubled.

Figures out yesterday from the Central Statistics Office showing that wholesale electricity costs are up 93%.

As far as they're concerned, they live on this boat for the rest of their lives.

Charlie, we've seen this trend for several months now, but that's a very, very sharp rise on this time 12 months ago.

It certainly is.

It's almost double, really, Rachel, you know, and it has been accelerating.

So you have to go back four years to get wholesale prices as high as that.

So it's ominous, I'm afraid.

It doesn't look good.

I mean, if that's sustained, we could be in for another round of price rises.

So Charlie then, even if another round of price increases on the household bill, even if another round of price increases isn't imminent, there are going to be a lot of people this winter who will find it difficult to cope.

But first of all, just explain what under-insurance is.

Yeah, essentially, Matt, this is where you have an insurance policy covering a house usually, you know, or a car, but the value, uh, that you have on that is not sufficient to replace it or rebuild it.

If it's a home, supposing it's, it's, it- it's 300 grand to replace that.

Not what it would sell in the market for.

It might sell for €400,000, but if you had to, it was burnt down tomorrow and you had to rebuild it, if, if it, it's about the rebuild cost.

So, um, and if you were only insuring for two, €200, €250, you are under-insured by definition if it's going to cost €300,000 to replace that, to rebuild it.

So an awful lot of people get confused between the market value of the property and what it'll cost to rebuild it, so it's the rebuild value of this.

Are there many people still in mortgage arrears?

And is there any downside risk to that, Charlie, in that, you know the way regularly when you talk about, um, subventions to help people get on the property ladder, the immediate downside tends to be that that inflates the overall prices because it equips people with more buying power.

This is the whole problem here, Anton.

That, th- this is encouraging demand.

Demand is there and it's strong anyway.

But I suppose, you know, the argument for first-time buyers is it helps them.

This is for first-time buyers or people who are a fresh start, divorced or whatever.

Uh, but essentially, yeah, it's, it's more homes we need.

We are not going to ask that question."

Over the last

four years, yeah.

So they've increased that.

There was pressure on from the backbenchers to increase the, you know, they wanted to get rid of stamp duty, a lot of the Fianna Fáil backbenchers in particular.

So the compromise arrived at and you get a very strong impression Simon Harris didn't want to go there on this one.

The compromise they've arrived at is this help-to-buy scheme where you get back...

It's a tax refund, essentially.

we're not saying that they

So that's about 75 quid, isn't it?

Yeah, 75 quid y- over a year, and it goes up again next October, so we need to c- count, put, add that in there.

Now, there was other bits and pieces, like if you've been savaged by home heating oil increases, you got 50 euros off that.

You won't be jumping up and down about that.

Um, there was lots of little bits and pieces, bits of, you know, tax relief here and there, some help people with, uh, child minding costs, um, 10 euros on the pension.

There was a small amount for everybody, really, but I don't think anybody will be overjoyed.

People are so annoyed.

Yes

Charlie?

Yeah, I mean, look, somebody on 50 grand a year is probably up about nearly 700 euros.

Remember, there was income tax cuts.

Essentially, the amount of income tax you pay is going down a bit because you're getting more credits and you can pay more tax at the 20% rate.

But PRSI went up this month as well.

So we have to counteract that.

75 quid over a year and it goes up again next October.

Charlie?

But one headline that I think you were writing on, one in five people believe the government should hike PRSI contributions to safeguard the state pension, Charlie.

Yeah, this is an interesting, interesting one, Jonathan.

Um, the state pension, as we know, is, uh, you get it from 66.

There was a plan at one stage to bring it up to 67.

Uh, that became a massive issue in the 2020 election.

There was a backlash, and the government were forced to, to leave it at 66.

Uh, so people are smart.

The, the US has pulled all its bombers out of RAF Fairford after the half-terrorist attack, or possibly not terrorist attack, don't we, last week.

If you sign up and you become a member, you can get lower prices.

You get lower prices.

Now, a- as I say, you just don't get any loyalty points from that purchase, and you can't use the loyalty points to offset that price, but you do get it at a lower price, and that's the same at all of them, and it work, it's the same in off licenses.

Now, m- Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll McNeill, is bringing in a regulation.

She's, it's a statutory instrument under the Public Health Act, uh, 19, or 2020- 2018, and she's gonna ban this practice.

You know, it's gonna be 18 months for lead in to give the supermarkets time to get around it, but this is wont to drive people nuts.

It seems very paternalistic, seems very nanny state, 'cause you have to consider, we have minimum unit alcohol pricing.

Which is a 10er a week.

Charlie, will you take us through these latest grocery figures? What do they tell us about prices and about consumer behaviour?

Well, Rachel, on prices, the prices are up 4.3%.

So the grocery inflation is now running at 4.3%.

That's up on what it was a month ago.

It's up on last year as well.

And that's in the four weeks up to the first week in September.

So it's largely the end of August and September.

Yeah, not surprisingly then, Charlie, the survey also suggests that more of us are using special offers.

And new figures would suggest it is becoming more and more normalized.

It would seem so.

This very frightening piece that's in the Irish Independent today, my colleague Mary Regan, she reports that about 60 TDs and Senators have access funds to improve the security of their constituency offices, their homes.

We're talking here about using...

Up to €25,000 is available to put in alarms, CCTVs, monitors, panic buttons, etc.

It's become a very dangerous profession.

And something like 96% of female politicians report abuse.

The CCCTB, the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base, by another name, a French minister wants Ireland to share our tech tax billions.

We talk a lot about the price of petrol and diesel at the pumps, but what about the price of home heating oil? Because it looks like the government is starting to get really worried about that.

Yeah, Matt, there has been serious increases, ridiculous increases.

You're talking in the last six weeks, a 32% increase for a 500 liters of, of, of home heating, kerosene, as it's called, same fuel that's used in jets.

500 liters is now about 840 euros.

That is 200 euros more than it was six weeks ago.

So 200 euros more.

Now, the fuel distributors tell me a lot of people are ringing up saying, "How much would it be for 200 liters?" Or, "How much would it be for 300 lit- liters?" Normally, this time of the year, the 700,000 people who have home heating oil would be filling up.

... and you're contributing to the grid rather than taking from it, are you guaranteed payment?

those are the kind of numbers that sharpen the ECB's mind, because that's a long way away from the 2% they're meant to be in and around.

It is, and this is the reason why we had the European Central Bank rate rise yesterday.

But according to experts I've been speaking to, people like RSM, they're an auditing tax company, you know, a lot of people just think this is going to go on.

They think we'll have two more years, it'll be 2028, before inflation starts coming under control.

And we're seeing, by the day, horrible price rises.

Health insurance going up, petrol, diesel, diesel over €2, way over €2.

Food prices continue to go up.

This one is particularly pricey.

It looks like we're gonna have to live, doesn't it, with permanently higher prices for oil, and that means that this idea, you know, that you can't go past €2 for a liter of petrol or diesel at the petrol pumps, you know what? I think what people were regarding as a ceiling might become a floor.

Well, it might well, Matt.

You, you're absolutely right.

Y- the oil price is over $100, $104 when I looked there for Brent Crude.

Uh, Goldman Sachs predicting it'll go to $120 a barrel.

The other problem is, it's all very well.

You may be able to buy plenty of crude oil, but can you get it refined? Because the refineries have been damaged.

So tell us your seven deadly sins.

Tell me about Winston Churchill.

Churchill's been awesome.

The teachers there are incredible and super dedicated.

They just started the agro-gardening class this past year, I believe was their first year.

And so they came to Environment Lethbridge and asked if we'd be able to create a perennial flowering bed to accompany their food garden, mainly to support pollinators, to support their food production, as well as bring some color and light to the space.

And it has been awesome.

Like the flowers did really well the first year.

Tell me about that.

And the other being that bus and train fares, and this is of course separate to the budget, but bus and train fares likely to be, not likely to be, definitely being hiked.

Yeah, bus and train fares likely to go up by, or not likely, as you say, are going to go up.

It's something like there's a 90 minute fare in Dublin.

It's two euros.

It's probably going to go up to 15%, which would take it to 230.

Some fares will go up by 30%.

But children under nine and older people who continue to travel for free, this seems bonkers given their fuel prices are so high.

And in terms of how do you live in this country, interesting story suggesting that one of the ways that people are finding ways to get on the property ladder is parents selling their family homes to their own adult children just to get them onto the ladder.

Now, when we talk about switching, I think a lot of... people who've got mortgages at the moment will be listening to us and I think switching is now becoming something that's going to be very useful for them because everything I read for the last week Charlie is that the ECB are going to put rates up we're going over 3% it's almost certainly going to happen if that's the case depending on what mortgage you're on at the moment that could have a significant impact on your mortgage

Yeah, and the savvy people are realizing, yeah, we're on a path here of higher interest rates.

I mean, it's a nailed-on certainty that tomorrow week, next Thursday, the 10th of September, the European Central Bank will put up its interest rates for the second time.

They went up in June, and we have the governor of the Irish Central Bank, Gabriel McClough, saying today he sees a possibility of further interest rates after that.

You know, it's to try and stem inflation.

So, yeah, you're absolutely right.

A lot of people are being, you know, are...

So what's happening here?

Now, for listeners hearing about this state-backed personal investment account for the first time, can you just outline what exactly the government is proposing here?

Yeah, they're going to bring in a new scheme to encourage you to put money into more risky investments than, say, your post office savings accounts, which are Incidentally, the rates of return, those were raised recently.

But anyway, these are new accounts which you'll be able to invest in, choose what you want to invest in, in terms of shares or funds or bonds or whatever.

But you won't be allowed to just put cash in.

And the idea is you would have a certain threshold, a certain amount of money.

which you could put into these every year and there'll be no tax on that.

And then any amount over that, the tax rate will be low up to a certain point.

Fair criticism, or would you agree?

Yeah, you're going to need legal, you're going to need a BER cert and you're going to need a valuation, right?

That's absolutely right.

Yeah, you need all that.

You're going to need to get a lawyer to do the legal.

You're going to have to come up with your documents.

It's like applying for a new mortgage.

Essentially, it's the same thing.

But seems to be starting to happen here.

make

a switch.

You do have to get a solicitor.

You do have to get a valuation of the home and you have to get a rating, a billion energy rating, a BER.

So you have to do all that.

Yeah.

But, you know, if you do that, it's certainly worth it in terms of the rates, because a lot of these people may be coming off incredibly good fixed rates, like as low as 2%.

Has the BPFI given any indication as to what people are switching to? Is it a race to find a good fixed? Is that what they want?

So what's the detail here? What has the VHI announced?

They've announced, as you say, a 2.75% increase.

Now, that's an average.

So your individual plan may have gone up by far more than that.

And of course, VHI is the big beast in the health insurance market with about 1.2 million customers.

So this latest increase comes after an increase in March at 3% and one in October at 3%.

So the cumulative increases are quite high.

But what's the reason when you dig into it? What's the reason for this increase?

But one of your colleagues in the Irish Independent has been reporting this week that that price could be going up.

There's gonna be another one.

Yeah.

My, my colleague, Rory Maginn, had, had a good story, uh, this week.

He, he's covered this a lot, and yeah, you're right.

In July, this Temu tax, this customs duty charge, came in, three euro- euros per item.

So, you know, if you have three different items, and even if they're small value, uh, they, they'll be charged at three euros.

In the package

Oh, it's per item.

Per item.

So, you know, if you bought a, a few small things worth five euro each in, in a pack, yeah, you were getting a, a six, you know, nine euros added to that if there's th- s- you know, f- 'cause it's three euros per item.

Lo and behold, the EU are proposing another charge, what they're calling a handling charge, essentially, and this is gonna be another two euros, and we don't know now whether this is gonna be per item.

This is coming from An Post.

My colleague Rory McGinn has this in The Independent.

We don't know whether it's gonna be per item, but it, you know, y- you're potentially talking about five euros here on a, on a bo- on a package you buy, you know, uh, that up till very recently, you might have bought, there were no handling charge, there was no customs charge.

Wow

Now, we, we discussed it i- i- in kind of tangential terms yesterday, but the soaring energy prices, uh, have seen a VAT windfall for the government.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, the, the, VAT on, on, on electricity, gas, petrol, and diesel, you know, essentially on fuels, it's projected to be up about 238 million this year, likely to hit 1.67 billion.

And VAT had been kind of, uh, it hadn't exactly been falling, but it hadn't been going up much, but it's way up.

And a lot of it's to do with fuel, 'cause fuel is more expensive because VAT on, on many fuels is 23%, particularly petrol and diesel.

What's this?

Yeah, look, uh, uh, across the market, m- m- mortgage rates have been unchanged.

There's new figures out from the Central Bank today.