Representatives from opposition parties have said the Government’s budget package lacks ambition, and criticised the one-off payments as a failure to tackle long-term issues.
Finance minister Michael McGrath unveiled the 14 billion euro budget package that the Government insists balances the needs of today with the future well-being of the economy.
The package agreed by the Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Green Party coalition in Dublin includes a 5.27 billion euro increase in public spending.
The budget included a number of one-off cost-of-living supports, including three electricity credits worth 450 euro; a winter fuel allowance lump sum of 300 euro; a 200 euro winter living-alone allowance; a Christmas bonus for welfare recipients; and 250 million euro in one-off business supports.
Labour TD Ged Nash described Budget 2024 as a “lazy rerun of all that was wrong with Budget 2023”.
“Tax cuts that favour the better off again. Failure to properly fund the public services on which we all rely, and which the citizens of this rich Republic should expect,” he said.
“Again, a wall of once-off payments, but no permanent change and once those once-off payments are gone, they’re gone.
“The Budget that will yet again be found to be regressive once lump-sum payments melt away like snow on a ditch.”
Mr Nash also said the one-off payments showed the Government lacked vision.
“This Government is woefully short of the vision we need to transform this society – 2.7 billion euro in once-off measures is no small sum of money. It’s a lot of money, but spread so thinly that nobody would be happy,” he said.
“Such a wall of money in lump-sum payments is no cause for back slapping, the likes of which we saw on the back benches earlier on, that doesn’t demand a standing ovation.
“The necessity of these once-off measures should be worn as a badge of shame by this conservative coalition.”
A temporary tax relief to benefit small landlords was announced and there would also be a reduction in the middle rate of the Universal Social Charge (USC).
Mr Nash said that “performative tax cuts” would damage public services.
“What we need are performing public services,” he said.
“Wherever there is a tax cut, if not replaced by taxes elsewhere, is one euro less for the social wage, for schools or hospitals, childcare, for community safety.
“The kind of tax cuts that were presented today, that disproportionately favour the better off, are as fiscally unwise as they are socially damaging.”
Mr Nash said budget measures would not change the economic circumstances of the worst-off.
“We’re the envy of Europe on the revenue side, but the poor relation on economic equality of childcare, health and housing,” he said.
“For too many, this Budget won’t change a thing, if you’re poor today, you’ll be poor tomorrow, and based on what we know now you will be even poorer next year.”
Social Democrats TD Roisin Shortall said the new measures were “desperately short of ambition”.
“There was an opportunity with this Budget, given the resources, to do some transformative things to tackle the big problems facing the country and ensure that we are not again pulling up the ladder and passing on problems to the next generation to solve,” she said.
“But instead, we have a Budget that is desperately short of ambition.”
The Government’s missed opportunity to tackle child poverty was, Ms Shortall said, the biggest failure of the budget.
“We know that child poverty doesn’t just contribute to bad outcomes, it has a direct and causal negative impact on children, particularly when it starts early in childhood and persists throughout,” she said.
“It affects everything – emotional development, educational attainment, mental health, physical well-being, career opportunities, and income in later life.
“It destroys and limits lives. You, minister representing the Government, I have to say, you today had an opportunity to tackle that and ultimately eradicate it.
Poverty Isn't a Once-Off! #Budget24 https://t.co/2Zg42Wd1Lk
— Richard Boyd Barrett (@RBoydBarrett) October 10, 2023
“You had the power to do that. But you failed to deploy that power.
“Of all of your failures and missed opportunities, this will be the most damaging and amounts to the biggest failure of this budget.”
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said the one-off payments would not be able to tackle systemic issues.
“The Government are seeking to dazzle and fool people with once-off measures, but the reality is that poverty, deprivation, financial hardship inequality are not once-off phenomena, they are systemic, and once-off measures will simply not cut it,” he said.
“And despite the attempts to dazzle people with these once-off measures, the net fact when you look closely at this Budget, is that taking into account the cost-of-living hikes, rises in inflation, the increasing rents, ordinary workers will be worse off after this Budget.”
