This Government is like RTÉ... the Budget is just another repeat
RTÉ does too many repeats – and so does this Government. What was announced yesterday amounts to a Reeling In The Years budget: a lazy repeat of all that was wrong with last year’s budget. No shortage of one-off payments – but once they’re gone, they’re gone.
A touch for everyone, but no one gets an actual helping hand.
We are at a crucial point in our country, yet I don’t believe this Government is up to the task ahead. We’ve had an unprecedented number of industrial relations issues, workers struggling to keep the lights on and food on the table, and too many children with disabilities falling through the yawning gaps in our disability services. So what do we get? Tax breaks for landlords, but crumbs for renters. All talk on child poverty, but nothing to change children’s outcomes
Yesterday evening, I took a call from a young woman in Drogheda who is struggling to keep her head above water – forking out essentially two mortgages between her rent and her childcare, cutting back on the weekly family pizza, no hope of a holiday, no hope of getting a break from this Government.
Budget 2024 could have been the moment we’ve all been waiting for. It could have given parents a break by capping childcare fees at €200 per month, something that we in Labour have long advocated for, as we look to build a universal, public childcare system.
Budget 2024 could have given young people, and their parents, hope that two generations wouldn’t continue to live under the same roof. Instead, we got tax breaks for landlords, those who are creaming it in while two in three people between the age of 25 and 29 can’t afford to move out of their childhood bedroom.
Budget 2024 could have cleaned up our communities, ended the blight of vacant and run-down homes that we see nationwide.
It could have tackled this systemic issue head-on and brought more homes into supply for families, for renters, for those living in homelessness. Instead, we’ll be left with somewhere between 70,000 and 170,000 homes lying vacant again tonight.
The most galling thing of all is the abject failure to tackle child poverty nationwide. Fine Gael likes to talk the talk, but can never bring itself to walk the walk and give every child a fair start.
What we needed was a children’s budget to end child poverty, to help the 188,602 children living in households below the poverty line. Instead, we got a fiver here, and two-fifty there. Time moves on, but nothing ever changes.
Budget 2024 smacks of cobbledtogether, stale plans from people who have held power for too long.
Why can’t they get the basics of a grown-up country right?
It’s incredible that this Government thinks we should treat the taxation of working people differently to the income generated from rental properties owned as investments. It is fundamentally wrong that people paying rent will now be paying more tax on their income than landlords. But that’s the type of change that this Government is presiding over.
Under this Government’s watch, the real value of working people’s wages continues to drop. Living standards are plummeting, over 20% of workers are on low pay and deprivation rates are up another four points since last year’s budget was thrown together.
The Government wouldn’t need to spend so much in lump-sum payments if it got things right last year. Those who are most in need are still paying the price for belowinflation social welfare increases last year and no increases in child benefit or the living alone allowance last year either.
This Government should be looking to best practice internationally and set out plans to widen our tax base by slapping a hefty wealth tax on those earning obscene incomes. Things have to be paid for. But why is it always by those captured in the middle?
The tax cuts announced yesterday will disproportionately benefit the better-off, the high rollers, those for whom the cost-of-living crisis only exists in stories they read in the paper.
We welcome the retention of the bank levy. Labour wants it at €500million, but the Government opts to keep it low at a time when banks look set to record astronomical profits of €5billion.
The Government keeps telling us that we have the money, we have the resources, but it clearly has no ambition.
This Budget could have been the opportunity to fix our society. To build homes, to invest in public childcare, to get to grips with the climate catastrophe, to get our health service right, to tackle inequality and to lay the foundations to build an Ireland that works for all. This Budget could have been the one to slash inequality and invest in services.
Politics is about choices. The lack of ambition from this Budget and this Government is exacerbating the housing crisis, the costof-living crisis and the climate crisis. We need change, and we need change now.