By Enda Kelly
Ruth Coppinger TD summed up the Budget with the line, “It was a giveaway for the takeaways”. The Government frankly has shafted working-class people; the Parliamentary Budget Office’s own analysis on the Budget found that the poverty rate in 2025 will increase from 11.7 to 13.2%. The poorest 10% will see a 4.4% decrease in their pockets directly because of the Budget.
Cost of living measures
The temporary cost-of-living measures were removed this year, leaving families €1,000 worse off. The welfare increases, amounting to an extra €10 a week for carers, disabled people and jobseekers, will be nearly entirely eaten up by inflation.
After this budget, people with a disability will be €1,404 worse off, according to the Disability Federation of Ireland. The Government has been repeatedly informed of the need for a disability payment, estimated to cost €199-291 per week, on top of everything else.
The €254 per week being given to people with disability doesn’t even cover this, let alone the rising cost of living generally. But we shouldn’t be surprised.
Economic malaise
Economic malaise is clearly on the agenda – Irish capitalism is particularly vulnerable to Trump’s trade wars and protectionism. The bubble in corporation tax receipts will burst if he closes down the loopholes that allow US multinationals to use Ireland as a tax haven.
Despite a budget surplus of €10 billion, the Irish economy is set up on shaky grounds. So, to get ready for this threat they have prepared an austerity budget, and naturally, it’s the working class that will pay.
The hospitality industry will be given €681 million through a VAT cut. This is not a targeted measure at smaller cafes that could be struggling due to electricity costs, but at the industry as a whole. It’s estimated that 41% of the hospitality revenue in Ireland is done so by massive fast-food companies like McDonald’s and Supermac’s. Both of these companies made over €40 million in profit, but the Government thought they needed a bit of help.
Developers are also doing well; they have received €390 million in a tax cut on selling new apartments. This is supposedly to encourage the building of new apartments, but the measure does not take account of when the apartments were built, meaning that already-built apartments will also benefit from this tax cut.
Super-rich developers
In a car crash interview on Morning Ireland, James Browne defended this measure as a way to increase supply, but could not offer any targets for this measure. It’s money for super-rich developers and little else.
To put this into context, a 20% increase in child benefit would cost €530 million. The figure to do away with the student contribution fee, which increased by €500 this year, is €289 million, and abolishing childcare fees is €349 million. These initiatives would help working-class people immensely, but as it always has been, it’s the working class that pays for the system’s crisis.
If you are wondering the logic behind the Budget, that’s fundamentally what it is about; it’s not for you, it’s for the people Fine Fail and Fine Gaels really represent: the vulture funds, the super-rich and big business.
This is why we need to organise as the crisis continues, things will keep getting worse and worse, we need to fight back against this system and fight for socialist change.
