Richard O'Donoghue: Proposes 170c Fuel Tax Cap for Rural Ireland

It's my turn now but I just want to do a small bit of research myself and I'm going to start with the front bench here. How many of you are living in the city on the front bench? Just the front bench here at the moment? Live in the city? Okay. Back bench? How many of you live in the city? Two out of the back bench live in the city. How many of you are driving EVs? Okay. How many of you are from rural Ireland? Okay. Now, so I'm doing my stats. And to tell you the truth, when I've been listening to the front bench, everything you've been talking about is where you have infrastructure. I've been listening to it from the very start. And to tell you the truth, I'm from rural Ireland, born and bred. And I've been listening to Johnny talking about farmers in rural areas. When was the last time you were in the countryside? Because I lived there. I'm sorry now but from your point of views, and I'll get to all the points of views. But when people are making decisions for Ireland, it's supposed to be inclusive. So you're supposed to have the experience when you do research for the whole of the country. And when I have a front bench here that are city-based, are not rural-based, you don't have the full package. And that's like me having a hurling match tomorrow morning with all backs and no forwards. I have no gain. So I like research to be done on both sides. I like people to do that research that are living on both sides so they can collaborate together. It's like our cabinet. When you have a cabinet that's 70 or 80% city-based, making decisions for the whole country, it doesn't reflect the country. So I'm a very pragmatic person. I'm a very common sense person. But I'm also a business person. I'm self-employed all my life. So I want the city to flourish. I want the counties to flourish. But I want the experience that one supports the other. But what's wrong here at the moment is a lot of the research that we're getting is one-sided. And it doesn't correlate for both sides. And one of your, Lisa, sorry, one of yours is, and it's probably the only comment that you mentioned that I would agree with you, was the offshore. I 100% agree with offshore. I do believe M&9, when they stopped the D6 maps, they stopped offshore. And there is houses scattered around this country, which wind farms and the health guidelines are there. In other countries that we've already mentioned, other countries here, have been shown that there's health guidelines on wind farms in too close to households. We've only a 2% area in Ireland to put up wind farms. That's what we have on land. So put them outshore, in areas where they don't cause problems. And we can get them up faster and get the electricity up. You mentioned insulation. Did your research show where insulation comes from? It's oil-based. Oil-based insulation and all the retrofits that are in Ireland, the insulation is oil-based. And why do I know this? I'm a building contractor with experience of building. I'm also a contractor that can tell you in the last four months there's been a 38% increase in the cost of insulation. But you wanted to get everywhere insulated in Ireland. Let's put more pressure on an oil-based product, which is going that way, to get all these houses insulated. I've done external insulation. I've done internal insulation. I've done attic insulation. I do it on a daily basis. I was on site this morning at 7 o'clock. That's my job. I'm a building contractor. I understand all the different prices of increases. And I've been listening to everything. And I've listened to you about that they tried the cap on fuel. But they didn't try a cap on the taxation of fuel. And it's one of the reasons I mentioned. I was on the protest, stood there for six days with people. And you mentioned that you're a certain age group. It was your age group that were on. I've never seen them protesting in this country in my lifetime. And these are people that would give you their dinner but wouldn't ask you for theirs. And this is what I want research to be done, research the whole country. So my idea on a cap on fuel was very simple. If you cap the fuel at 170, and if the fuel cost did go up, you pay the increase in the cost of the fuel, but you don't pay tax on the increase. So ten weeks ago, fuel was at 170 a litre for diesel. So when you took the tax out of 170, and I'll just use diesel at the moment, you were paying 88.4 cent in taxes. And in petrol, you were paying 89.60 in taxes. That was ten weeks ago. Today, you're paying 195 for diesel. But you're paying 101.4 in taxes. So if you had done what I asked them to do, the government, which would have actually benefited all the low income families, all the businesses, all the hauliers, transport section across this country, if they capped it at 170 for taxables, at 195, which it is today, it wouldn't actually be 195, because you'd take off 13 cent tax, it would be at 182 at the pumps today. And the revenue in the country wouldn't have went down. But what did it come up with? Let's target transport. So you went to the Royal Hauliers Association, which only represent 17% of haulage in this country. It doesn't represent all the transport network. So you've targeted 17%. You didn't target the rest of the country. Whereas if you put a cap on the cost of fuel, we pay the increase on the cost, but we don't pay tax on it, it would have benefited every single person in this country. That comes from a business person with lifetime experience, because on a weekly basis I'm shown the increased cost in construction. That's why I want people, that when they come in here for experience, and doing their data, and doing their research, I want it from all sides. I don't want it from one sector. And that's the one thing that I'm looking at this. You talked about speed limits. I'm a car enthusiast. I'm a petrolhead. Born and raised. No problem with EVs, when you have the infrastructure to provide them. But when you're three weeks without electricity, which we were two years ago, my fossil fuel Jeep helped an awful lot of people survive. Whereas your EVs were stuck at home and they could do nothing. Your heat pumps were off because people had to come to my house to stay warm. When you've infrastructure, you can talk about all the experiences and the data that you have, but until you've infrastructure, you can't do this. The average car in this country, the average car that people are driving, is 2010 to 2018, researched. They can't afford to buy anything better than that. That's the research that I'm doing. So if we want to help the country holistically, we've got target things don't work. Because there's always somebody left behind. Whereas one measure of capping the fuel costs, and we pay the increased costs, but we don't pay the taxation on it, would have actually helped everyone by 13 cents a litre at the moment. That would have also, in the transport network, they locked it in at 192. And what did they do afterwards? After the VAT comes back, that's 156. As you can see, I like numbers. When you take the 156, they give them 1300 euros per truck. When you work it back, if you had it at 170, there would have been no rebates. So we could have locked it in for the transport networks at 170 without rebates, and it would have actually made across every network, whether you were a van commercial, truck commercial, bus commercial, across the thing, the targeted things don't work. You have to have one thing that targets everyone, regardless of the circumstances. That stops inflation. And the people that are the most worse off in this country are the squeezed middle working class. They're the worst off now. In my household, and I've been building contractor, I have four sons. You think I'd be able to build a house cheaper? At today's cost? The inflation is passing quicker than what they can actually save in every 12 months. So I'm all for what you're saying, but it doesn't work outside the red cloud, because the infrastructure is not in place for that to happen. And that's what I want to happen for everyone. So I'd like to go to John here on this. On my idea of capping the fuel for taxation, and we pay an increase in cost, could it work? Obviously, if the government decided to do it, it would work, but it's a very bad idea. For what reason? All right, three reasons. Firstly, if the price of fuel goes up, people will pass on the price. So the current system, where they've reduced the tax, if oil prices go up further, they'll be passed on. More important, the people, and this is where... Sorry, I want you to finish that point up. I said the cap on fuel, and we pay the increased cost, but we don't pay tax on the increased cost. Could it work? The increased cost, we'll pay the increased cost of the fuel, but we won't pay tax on the increase above 170. So you've no loss of revenue? You can reduce the tax revenue to the tax rate if you want, but we're spending 700 million for, is it four months? 750 million. It'll be over two billion. It's not going everywhere. It'll be over two billion. It's not going everywhere. And the figures show that it doesn't go to people at the bottom of the income distribution, it goes to people who are in the middle, are better off. And when you need to target those who are going to be cold next winter, and it's particularly rural. I did emphasise rural households because they're on... You said an old farmer, that he could go cold in his own house. An old farmer will have timber, there's no fear of us out there, us old farmers. You asked me, there are two other... First of all, there's the distribution effect. The reason why the IMF and the EU Commission have said, don't cut taxes on fuel, is if you go into an... I'm not asking to cut taxes on fuel. Hold on a second. If you go into an auction, and I go into an auction to buy a house, and I'm prepared to bid 470 and you'll bid 500. But if somebody at the door says, the government will give you 100 grand to whoever buys the house, you'll bid 600 and I'll bid 570. If the world reduces the tax on oil, people will have more to bid, and the price of oil will go higher in the world. This is like... I'm not asking to reduce taxes on oil. I'm asking you to put a cap on the taxation that can be taken. So you'll have the same tax as what you would have had 10 weeks ago, as you would have it today, rather than paying an inflatable tax on the increase in the cost of fuel above 170. So there's no loss in revenue from 10 weeks ago to today if they had put in a cap on the taxation of fuel above 170, no tax, below 170 tax. So you have no loss of revenue from 10 weeks ago to today if they had put in a cap on the taxation of fuel above 170, no tax, below 170 tax. So you have no loss of revenue. But the problem is that we're facing if the Straits of Hormuz remain closed, you're looking at inflation moving to 5%. And that's exactly why I wanted it. And if tax revenue doesn't rise in line with it, like I talked about a hole in the public finances, you get a bloody massive hole. If prices go up, the government get more money in that, which will help pay for the unemployed and so on. But if you cap it, the hole for the public finances becomes even bigger. Listen to me, I'm in business all my life. If you've got a cap on something and you pay the increased cost, but you won't pay taxes, the government had no loss in revenue 10 weeks ago if they had capped it. So there would be no loss in revenue. You would have no 750 million euros targeted because it would have been capped. But the problem I'm saying to here is I'm in business all my life. I can see it. And I'm self-employed all my life. And I have people working for me. So I'd like to ask the backbench if from what I'm trying to say here, from a point of view, is that capping fuel, taxation on fuel at 170, and people pay the increased cost, which would have been today would have been $0.13 less if they had capped it. There would no loss in revenue. The target of what they were targeting from the transport network, every household would have got it. That's the person going to work. On the 2.3 million vehicles on the road, which only minor EVs, which have no public transport, which I was trying to state. So then we would have been able to target everyone. Because when the cost of fuel goes up in my business, I've got to add it on. So that means the consumer is paying all the time. So the minimum wage goes out of sync. Everything goes dearer and dearer because of transport costs. 82% of our goods come through Dublin Port and are transported in trucks around the country. 82% in Dublin Port. When you add it all up, if we had put in a capped system, we could have steadied the ship even if it was only for a certain amount of time. We could have steadied the ship. And also, we need to put in these sequences from budget to budget. So not only can the government budget for the year, but businesses and small businesses know from October to October, we know exactly what's going to happen in budgets. So we can forecast the business. At the moment, over the last five years, you can forecast nothing. I'm just going to go over here. Sorry. I'll get him in a minute. Thank you. Yes, thank you. And I see your point and appreciate the sentiment. However, I think John was alluding to something that is macroeconomical. So basically, the behavior of individual countries will affect the price so that eventually at some point, Ireland with the idea might be worse off. And I would like to add also another risk about pursuing that type of policy, which is basically it's very, very difficult to roll out. What we do and what we advocate in our research is that when you're facing a crisis, we are talking about the emergency measures. And these measures should be temporary. And the other thing is that, of course, we want more support, but resources are limited. And you will always have to find the balance between untargeted transfers where you miss no one, and probably everyone will need help, and providing adequate support. Maybe you're going to end up in a situation where you spread yourself too thinly. And even if you're giving something to everyone, that something wouldn't be enough. So here it is just to take a step back and assess the situation so that, let's say, if you want to focus on the lowest income households and the squeezed middle, then do that. But see where you are. And our research definitely puts a lot of attention to rural households and to the most disadvantaged. And it takes too long to target it because we can see by the time you implement something, you looked at the concrete crisis, they put on an extra 5% after something happened within concrete. That was put on on top of the price, so it's actually added on. So something that's targeted on the short term, even at the capping of fuel, and pay the increased cost for the consumer to pay the increased cost, it's a reduction because they're only paying the increased cost. They're not paying the increased cost plus tax. So it takes the pressure off. It would have affected the transport, and every sector cost would have gotten at the same time. And then you could have implemented something for the likes of the point of the transport. If it was below that, you could have then given them a tariff to keep the cost lower because of the way this country's set up on the transport network. It's mainly fossil fuels. At the moment we need to deal with today, without affecting the taxpayers, we could have done it. A one targeted thing by just capping it for even that short term. And I'm trying to say it's from a forecasting point of view, and just bringing in context for a house. A house in November, a one-off house in November. The difference from November to the 6th of January was eight and a half thousand on insulation costs on the house. Eight and a half thousand on insulation costs in a house. And we're looking at trying to look at making things better, making things warmer for people at the moment. And you mentioned burners, the amount of burners that went out. Do you know why the burners went out? Number one, people couldn't afford to change their heating system. But what they've done was they've put in high condensing burners, which burn half the fuel which their old ones were burning, so we'll drop the emissions by 50%. In an interim, until we can get people into the 100% solar panels. 100%, right? 100% offshore, 100%. And 100% for insulation, when we're not driving the cost of inflation on the other side, by promoting something that's already under pressure. So we have to work with different and alternative methods, 100%. But we have to work with today, and if we don't put out a target that targets everyone at the one time and creates a cushion, that's what we need to do. And I'm going to finish up on this one from the agricultural point of view. A scheme was put out for a 12 cent a litre for agriculture. But what they didn't do, they didn't target it, what did they have to do? You've got to send in your receipts for 2025, and it's based over what you burnt or used in 2025. If you want to do something targeted, if the new agriculture, agriculture is the most intense part is five months. That's when you use the most amount of fuel. But they worked it out over 12 months, which means that 12 cent is now eight cent when you work out the maths, but it's based over 12 months. If you want to target something to bring down the cost of food, and we've all mentioned about all the different things that are happening, different wars, different everything. If we don't keep those farmers going, and we don't keep food security in here, and our population's after rising by a million and a half in the last decade, we could have a consequence that nothing would be coming into the country, and we might be dependent on the people to produce food here. And they are the people that we're, at the moment, we're not targeting to try and help them. So I thank you for everything that you have come up with, but I would appreciate if researchers come in here to me that you have the research of the country, and that the panel is actually research across the country, so I get the full context of Ireland, not just one sector. And I just, from that basis, Deputy Cummins, do you want to come in? I'd just like to say thank you for coming in here today, and thanks for all your excellent research, and it's very much appreciated what you have to say. Thank you. Has anyone else would like to comment on the process of today? Go ahead. Well, thank you for your comments, and I'm surprised that you find that we're not focused on the whole country, because I think if my comments, it's true I'm from Dublin, are nearly solely focused on rural Ireland, in fact, because I do think that that's where the problems are lying right now, and that's where we have a lot of the crisis, and I agree with you on that. I'm kind of though hesitant, because you have a big statement, maybe this isn't my side, because I'm meant to be answering your questions, but I'd really flip it back at you, I'm not sure what you would like, because if you say we're against insulation, you're not allowed to reduce taxes, I think, and my understanding is the tax proposal that you put forward, if you if you reduce the VAT. I'm not reducing the VAT, you didn't list it. No, the tax, but the percentage part, because, and to say that, for the short term. Yeah, but if you do that, you have to put it on all goods, taxes are levied across goods, you can't just do it on fuel. It was just on the fuel, because it would have actually interacted across all the different processes. Oh, I know, but I don't think legally you're allowed to do that, I'm just saying that you're, I think. Legally you're not allowed around five percent on blocks here. I'm not, I'm not a legal expert, and there has been 32 cents given on excise duty, so that's more than my understanding. But when the fuel price goes back up, you're back up to 195 at the moment, and when you work it back, you're paying the increased costs. So to give everyone a chance, a 170 would have been a cap. Then if there's an increase, we're paying on the increase of the cost of the fuel, we're not paying a tax on the increase, so that actually helps everyone by 13 cents per litre. I understand your plan, and I don't know if it's legally allowed or not, but I'm just addressing some of the other points. 100%. The speed limit, you're a petrol head, how is that an answer? Like if we're talking about really people's got to have costs, and they're trying to reduce them. We'll do one at a time. So most cars, EVs, have electric motor which runs the EV motors, and I'm into electrics as well. But the cars, a lot of the cars now have seven and eight speed gearboxes. If you run a car on an eight speed gearbox at 80 kilometers an hour, it's in a lower gear, so it revs higher, which burns more fuel. So that's what I'm trying to say from the point of view of cars running efficiently. If you run certain cars that have a higher gear ratio, so you have a five speed, you have a six speed, you have a seven speed, you have an eight speed, and it depends on the type of vehicle that you use. And that's what I'm trying to say from a mechanical point of view. I'm into the cars as well. So I look from the older cars, which I have from 1950s, all the way up to the modern day cars. So I look at all the different ratios of cars. But most of the cars between 2010 to 2018, most of the cars on the road at the moment are either five or six speed, and any of the automatics run either seven or eight speed. That's what they run. No modern cars are 10 speeds. But it's the ratio. But why don't we talk about a campaign measure to get people to be more aware? I don't think everybody knows how to drive the high speed, like you're talking about seven or eight gear. I mean, I worked in Volkswagen, I know about car engines as well. But we know the sweet spot for the vast majority of internal combustion engines is at 80 kilometers per hour. And so maybe some people know how to drive them very efficiently at other speeds. But you know, why don't we run a campaign to show people how to drive cars eco driving? It's like, it's proven to take off, we're not at all talking about how to reduce our demand. I think there's more emphasis needs to be on that. And that these are little things that would help people. It's not about trying to control people, but just would give them some things to help themselves. You know, that's why I'm coming back to what we had from from your own research at the moment, from having you in here today. And it's not for me, it's not it's not targeted. Yes. And 100% from the from the target point of view. But what I wanted to do was to get to see where your heads were at. Wanted you to see where our heads were at. Then we can work together and we can target something between us to find solutions, even if we find 10% of what we have today, between us with a holistic view, we can then make a change. If we find 1% we've made a change. But I want all the sides to come together and we find that 1% if we can make a 1% difference here today, it's a difference. But if we if we all come and we have all different ideas, and we're going on different trajectories, and the government follow one trajectory, let's let them find something. Let's try something different. Use your experience and your knowledge, mix it with your experience and knowledge with mine and other people's, we find something then that holistically can represent the country on all on all systems. Agreed. So yeah, would you like to say anything from yourselves? Because this is probably one of the best meetings that I've been at. And I'm sorry if I've come across it. I'm not. Because we've had great meetings. But I want to find things that we can make changes. And by people coming in and giving me their views, it's no good unless we have a hustle bustle across it. And we can actually get to everyone's mindset and see where we have because then we've got it. We've got the ingredients of the cake and we can then bake it, regardless whether we agree in all of it or not, we find a common ground of what we agree on and move forward. So I'm actually delighted with this here today because it's probably one of the best debates that I've had in a long time, because it's over and back and that's what I want to listen to. It's no good to me coming in here and doing this all day. So I'm pushing you because I want you to push back and I want to find a mindset from yourselves. So if you'd like to come in with anything else, I'd really appreciate it. John? Just one does research and I've spent 50 years doing research, first of all in the Department of Finance when I had to read the Farmer's Journal every week and follow up on farming. One does research based on the data and the fact that I don't come from a household living in poverty doesn't mean that I can't do research in poverty. So I think that the fact that I am from Dublin doesn't mean that I can't do research in Ireland. The final thing I'd just say is I admire your faith in Donald Trump and the Ayatollahs to sort this out, because my point is that it is possible you've seen nothing yet in terms of the crisis. The Taoiseach sounded, the adult in the room after the head of the IEA said what was coming down the track, when he sounded a warning and after the European Council in Cyprus, he once again said, now I would be critical because he hasn't followed up on it. You obviously don't see that there's a potential massive crisis coming down the tracks. If diesel goes to €3.50, there are parts of Asia where they can't get diesel today. So I think that we need to be prepared for a completely different world. That's my point. Well, I agree with you. And Donald Trump, I don't have any faith in Donald Trump and the systems that he has. That's your view and you're entitled to your view. What I have is, looking at it, and I'm not saying that I'm from Dublin. My uncles live in Dublin, right? And they're as wise people as what you are, right? And they've been in business. You're welcome to the county for us to come out and work on your experience in the county and live a bit of what we have outside. So you might actually come up with something with all the wisdom that you have that might actually benefit people. So research across the country, you can only get research from lifetime experience. What did I call that problem? Come live with Lucy, is it? So they go to different places. You get all the different. I come to Dublin, I get the experience. I go to different counties, different places. You get the experience of different. Every place is different. No research will tell you what's different. And we talked about him and Ryan before, and his experience was 30 cars to a population of 3,000 people. That means that you didn't understand what you were talking about on the first day, right? That, to me, is somebody that was looking at where he'd walk out the door and get on a bus or get on a Lewis. So put him out into the country for a month or two and then realise, oh my god, we can't do that. But that's the type of experience we want. And the towns and villages, to me, are probably the key to get what you need and everyone else needs across the board. We put in the infrastructure in the towns and villages. We build the infrastructure in those areas where it's the electricity, where it's the storage, where it's the water. We can then put on a fast rail network to connect the dots. So you can be living in Limerick and you can work in Dublin. You can get on something fast. But the infrastructure has to be in the dots around the country to do it. But the problem is they've been investing everything within the Dublin areas, and they haven't invested in the rest of the country. So we can't join the dots. And if we can join the dots, it makes... Do you want to come in with something? So I do not have a car. I do live in Dublin, but I don't drive. So for me, the idea that it needs to be car-based, not in my experience. I would, however, point you to the experience in other European countries that have similarly rural populations and that are implementing targeted measures for those populations. So it's not impossible, and our neighbours a little slightly further away can help in that regard. In terms of speed limit, a family that lives in the Netherlands, they have a speed limit at 80 kilometres an hour. It's not impossible to get something. So there is potential that this could work. Understand. And on road networks in this country, where the roads are incapable of doing that speed 100% on a motorway, I have no issue with the speed limit on a targeted, which is a motorway. On a targeted, which are there at the moment. On road infrastructure, again, the infrastructure is not there for a lot of roads. We have roads that are three metres wide and they had them put in at 80 kilometres an hour. I don't agree with that, because you couldn't do 30 kilometres an hour on the road to mind 80. But on good quality roads, on vehicles, but also on the point of view of transport networks, there was something that came up with a resolution for trucks, the older trucks, because it's so expensive, to upgrade the trucks. They came in with a Euro 5 engine. That would have reduced the fuel consumption by 30% if they had invested in new engines, even on the older vehicles. That was a change that I was looking for, and they said, no, no, it costs this much to do it, but we would have brought down the fuel emissions at temporarily, it would have lasted us, they could do a million kilometres, but over a million kilometres, you take out 300,000 less in emissions would have been absolutely huge. So there are small improvements on what we have working with at the moment, but 100% of where we want to get to, I'm 100% of that, but how we get there in piece by piece, I prefer to take one bite of the apple at a time and make it worthwhile, and then we can eat the whole apple together. But at the moment it has to be targeted. I'd like to go to the top. It sounds like you're opening your house to an economist to come live with you, so I'd be careful what you wish for now. You're all welcome. I grew up in a small town, but now I am privileged that I can afford solar panels and an electric car, and I think you hit on something there, that you can only afford that if you get a subsidy for your high income, and subsidies are targeted on newer cars. Again, there's no point in giving a subsidy for a solar grant if you're not going to fully enable lower income people to get it, so there's no point in having these thousands of subsidies if you can't even spend a few hundred euro in the start. So I think when we talk about targeting, we should be targeting towards measures that lower income people to get solar panels in their house, and lower income people to be able to buy second hand EVs as a stock bill, so I think that's really important. A bit of a plug for our switch model, so our switch model is the model used in various government departments to look at distribution impact analysis, and we're actually building in a component now that you can do that at a rural, urban or a county level, so we are very conscious of that, but as you say, even in our own family, I have a mechanic that looks at my EV like it's the devil and thinks it's terrible, but one really important thing as well is, if you saw the IFAC report, they're warning us about how much we're going to be fined if we don't meet climate targets, so inevitably that will fall on taxpayers as well, so I think those targeted measures on making sure that it's not only higher income people that get to have these types of technologies is really important. Yeah, and just to come in to you on the EVs, a perfectly targeted system, as I said, I have four sons and they have their apartments, there's seven cars in my house, there's seven cars at the moment in my house, and there's an eighth one coming. If there was a system there that you could actually turn around to somebody, even a couple, and you could say, right, we're going to bring out a system that if you have two cars, that we will subsidise one EV, so you'll get one of them off the road. That would be a solution, a problem shared is a problem halved. If they brought in a subsidy for that, that you can get one car off the road, I'd be 100% for that. And even if you had cars that are trading five years old, electrics, that say, right, we're going to give you a complete new battery system into your car, we're going to warranty this car for another five years, on electrics. The electrics are not as hard on the running system, because they don't have the drive shafts the same as other cars, so they run a lot longer. They're heavier on tyres, but they run a lot longer because they're a heavier vehicle. But it's the battery time that they have. And an awful lot of the problem with the old electric cars were that from 2016, people came on and said they wanted to keep the car that they had up in 2021, right, they said they wanted to keep the car. The batteries that were put into the cars, the wiring system in the cars were not compatible, so they couldn't upgrade the existing electric cars, which means you couldn't get more mileage out of your car. So again, forward thinking, they've now upgraded the wiring system, so now you can put in the higher output batteries when they're being developed better into the cars that are actually produced today. But they had to learn that too, and it's getting better, but we'll all get there together. If we actually collaborate everything together, and we have something together, and if we make, as I say, one small piece for the whole country, it'll be a job well done. Well, I must admit it's my first day back for a while. It's been an interesting day back, and I have to thank all the witnesses for coming in. It's been a very innovative discussion, and I look forward to having many, many more. And I look forward to coming to you for information and advice, and I welcome you to come to me as well to help in your endeavours as well, so we might actually find some way forward for everyone together. So thank you very much.