No certainty for future by Government
WORKERS and families needed a budget that delivered certainty in the here and now as well as ambition to build for the future.
Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens had the scope to give people certainty about energy costs and certainty on rents. They decided not to do so.
They also had the opportunity to plan for the future and deliver on housing, on health and on real climate action.
Despite all of that uncertainty in the global economy, Ireland’s public finances are in a strong position to support households and businesses in the challenging time ahead.
We are facing the worst cost of living crisis in a generation on top of the biggest fall in living standards since the financial crash.
The reality of this budget is that people on middle and low incomes who were worried about energy costs yesterday will remain so today.
And worse — there will now be huge concerns that we will see widespread rent increases in the coming months.
Squeezed
It is incredible that at a time when so much has been said about the squeezed middle that 1.8 million workers will not get one cent from the government’s main tax proposal.
In the midst of a health crisis, there is not one additional acute bed delivered and the situation in housing is just as appalling.
This budget was about political choices. Unfortunately, many of the choices made by ministers Paschal Donohoe and Michael McGrath were the wrong ones.
Sinn Féin would have slashed the USC and made cost of living payments to middle and low income workers; putting €600 in the pockets of nurses, teachers and private sector workers who are on €36,000.
We would have put a month’s rent back into renters’ pockets and banned increases for three years.
We would have brought electricity prices back to pre-crisis levels and capped them until February,.
We would have provided an extra €1.08bn to deliver 20,000 homes.
We would have invested an additional €360m in climate change — expanding rural bus scheme and investing in our ports.