The return of energy credits is unlikely when the Government delivers its second budget next month and changes to income tax are likely to only have a “modest” impact on workers, senior Government members have said. Speaking in Tullamore, Co Offaly at the Fianna Fáil think-in, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said he did not want to completely rule out the return of some one-off payments in the budget to help with the cost of living. However, he said any such measures would reduce the capacity of the Government to fund other areas, citing childcare and the cost of disability.“We want to reduce the cost of childcare. The more you put into one-off payments, the less you have to reduce childcare costs,” he said.“Every time you do a one-off payment by say €1 billion or €2 billion, you reduce your capacity to deal more substantively with issues that matter to people on an ongoing basis ... so energy credits for everybody – I can’t see the capacity being there to do that.”Martin said the Government wanted to use the budget “to ease cost-of-living pressures on people”, suggesting that would be a feature of both the tax and expenditure sides of the package. Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers said cuts to income tax would be “modest”, benefiting most people by only a few hundred euro per year.Ministers have been flagging plans to cut taxes for months, with Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris telling a chamber of commerce meeting in Mullingar on Monday that Budget 2027 would support people “who get up early every morning and go to work”. He said cutting business taxes and cutting income tax “are the priorities” as budget negotiations enter their final stage.Chambers echoed Harris’s language, saying the Government wanted to help people who get up early “but also get up and work nights too, so it’s about all workers across the economy”.However, he cautioned against unrealistic expectations about the scale of the tax package. There was much criticism of the Coalition last year for opting not to reduce the income tax burden. “I’m honest about what I believe it will achieve. It will be a modest income tax package, one that amounts to €1.5 billion in total,” Chambers told reporters at the think-in. “I’m very clear that it is modest and the adjustments will amount to, you know, it could be a few hundred euro, depending on your income, which I know on an annualised basis would be perceived as modest among the public.”He said it would take “a series of budgets for people to see the real improvement in terms of keeping more of their take-home pay”.Asked if there was scope to cuts to inheritance tax, as some Government backbenchers have sought, Chambers said: “I think there is, depending on where we land on income tax.” But he said a proposal to equalise different categories of beneficiaries would cost “hundreds of millions” and was “impossible”.Earlier, the Taoiseach said changes proposed by Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan that tighten the requirements for citizenship would be considered by the Government this week. He praised changes already made to the rules on immigration, saying they had created a “firmer and more robust” system.“And the numbers of those seeking asylum have reduced in the last 12 months. In terms of returns all of that is happening efficiently and effectively. The EU asylum pact is working.”He added that the “costs of accommodation in respect of asylum are also coming down very significantly ... so that firmer, more focused, targeted response is yielding results”.A party member takes a photograph with Ministers Niall Collins, Mary Butler and Jim O'Callaghan and Taoiseach Micheál Martin at Fianna Fáil's think-in at Tullamore Court Hotel in Tullamore, Co Offaly. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire He said the temporary protection status afforded to Ukrainian refugees was “never meant to be a path to citizenship” and that many refugees would be needed back in Ukraine after the war.Fianna Fáil TDs, Senators and MEPs are gathering in Tullamore for two days for the party’s think-in before the Dáil resumes next week.Asked about his leadership, Martin said the “entire parliamentary party is in unison” behind him and was “focused on the issues that matter to the people”.He later said he expected to have discussions with British prime minister Andy Burnham later this month about Northern Ireland issues, including potentially on the criteria for holding a Border poll in the future.Under the Belfast Agreement, the calling of a Border poll is a matter for the British government, but it stipulates that the Northern Ireland secretary shall call one where it seems like to pass. Successive British governments have refused to say how they would arrive at that judgment.“At the time of the Good Friday Agreement that issue was left deliberately vague ... but that’s an issue that at some stage needs to be discussed,” the Taoiseach said.He said he favoured Irish unity, but cautioned against equating a demand for a Border poll with republicanism. “The concept of republicanism is much broader than that,” he said. “We should be careful of not being sucked in by soundbites and by campaigns that seem to me to have short-term objectives to satisfy political bases.”