A cabinet minister has given the clearest hint yet that the Universal Social Charge will be cut in the next Budget.

James Reilly says Fine Gael has already taken some people out of the tax net - and plans to do more in the next Budget.

Before now ministers had only said they hoped to cut the unpopular tax in October.

However, now Mr Reilly has gone further by suggesting it's a clear government intention:

“It’s very obvious that the universal social charge is something that the government has addressed,” he said.

“It was a Fianna Fail tax brought in by them but we’ve taken 410,000 people out of the net and we intend to take more people out of the net and reduce the charge to those that remain in the net,” he added.