Tralee’s vital statistics
Population: 23,357
Households: 9,127
0 of 4
Houses with broadband: 5,347
Number of children: 6,097
Average house price: €135,000
Number who completed third level: 3,417
Source: CSO
The solicitor
Joe Mannix
Solicitor Joe Mannix, who has practised for 30 years from his base on Castle Street in the centre of Tralee, says Budget 2017 is "probably fair and balanced".
A couple of things strike him as being good for enterprise which large towns such as Tralee badly need.
Tralee had a great industrial past but it has been destroyed in recent years. Mannix was hoping for specific measures which would revitalise both industry and enterprise. The reduction in capital gains will have an effect.
The extension of the new business development scheme is also very welcome, as it will help towns such as Tralee. Targeting funding for third-level education was necessary as it was losing ground in Ireland.
“Tralee is a third-level town and the focus on third-level education in the budget will help,” he says.
From a legal point of view, like other solicitors and those in the legal and business community in Tralee, Mannix would also like to see a capital sum set aside in the budget specifically for the improvement and expansion of Tralee’s courthouse.
The budget has no detail about this, but Mannix hopes there will be a sum in the Department of Justice/Courts Service allocation specifically for Tralee.
Its iconic courthouse, a listed building, is one of only five countrywide not to have been improved in recent years. The 1835 building has been the subject of public commentary by politicians and the judiciary but money has not been set aside for it
The courthouse hosts the District Court, Circuit Court and High Court, as well as the Coroner’s Court and annual sittings of the Central Criminal Court. Improving the building would allow courts office staff to move back into the building.
Earlier this year an old army barracks at Ballymullen was being assessed as a new court complex, but this would adversely affect business in the town centre, Mannix says.
The homemaker
Karen Pullen
Karen Pullen, a married mother with two boys, is a homemaker whose husband, Gavin, works outside the home. The cost of education, health, the universal social charge (US) and lack of breaks for women or men in the home whose spouses are employed are among Karen’s priorities for Budget 2017
Son Seán, aged 14, is sitting the Junior Cert next year, while 10-year-old Luke is in primary school. The biggest impact on the household finances in recent years has been the USC and she was hoping this would go or be drastically reduced.
Pullen is disappointed with the budget, she saw nothing in the budget for the homemaker. The cut of 0.5 per cent will mean very little to them .
“A cut of 0.5 per cent, a few euros. For God’s sake! We are a single-income household,” she says.
She is not convinced there is much for “mainstream” primary and secondary schools which are under pressure for maintenance money and other funding. Parents, who themselves are hard-pressed, are shouldering the burden.
“I am disappointed. I think if the primary schools and secondary schools were funded better, education would be a better experience for children,” she says.
Teachers are under pressure and are overworked with bigger classes. In “the fantastic school” her son Luke attends, class sizes have increased and there are now 30 in his class. When her older son was at the same school, there were fewer students.
New and highly qualified teachers are having to leave Tralee and other towns in Kerry because schools can’t employ them. Almost every town and village in Ireland are in the same boat, so there would need to be a huge increase in the number of new teachers employed to ensure smaller class sizes , she says.
There was nothing specific in the budget for better funding for schools “to relieve the burden on parents”, she says.
Waiting 14 months recently for an appointment, Pullen sees nothing in the health budget which would make it easier or quicker to get an appointment for her or her children to see a consultant in the public health system.
She will still not be able to return to third-level education after the budget; if she and her husband were both unemployed, she could get financial help for college fees. However, because Gavin works and she is a homemaker, she gets nothing
The pensioner
Kitty Enright
Kitty Enright wanted “fair play for pensioners” in the budget. Budget 2017 did not provide that for her.
“I hope to get back entitlements lost due to austerity,” Enright says, citing cuts to her fuel and phone allowances and the two-week Christmas bonus, which has been only partially restored.
The €5 extra will also not kick in until March.“Why not January?” Enright asks.
She says pensioners “worked” hard for their entitlements and for their pensions. Prior to the budget Enright had highlighted the taking away of the death grant, saying pensioners wanted it restored.
Enright, a mother of four, grandmother of six and a great-grandmother of three, says the €5 a month reduction in the maximum that over-70s pay for medicine will be of benefit. She had also been hoping for the full restoration of the Christmas bonus
Overall Enright was “very disappointed”. She was also still calling for more targeted daycare and nursing care facilities for the elderly, to allow people live in their own homes, saving on hospital and nursing home care.
She wants more facilities for places such as Tralee’s Baile Mhuire Day Care Centre, where active and not-so-active retired people meet for nursing, pastoral care, social activities, exercise and midday meals.
“There is just one in Tralee. Baile Mhuire should be a template for others. In fact, every village and community should be able to provide one and there should be sums in the budget for this. We still feel we are forgotten.”
The publican
Garry O’Donnell
“There are three types of people in Ireland: the seriously wealthy, the PAYE and self-employed and the ‘new wealthy’ – those who are unemployed or part-time employed and get all the benefits,” says publican Garry O’Donnell of Baily’s Corner, a well-known rugby and debating restaurant and pub in the heart of Tralee.
O’Donnell turns 66 in December when he will be eligible for the State pension, “the only thing I will ever get”.
He says the retention of the VAT rate at 9 per cent was very welcome for the restaurant industry and pub dining businesses such as his. “I am glad they did not touch the VAT,” he says.
He was also glad the price of drink in pubs was not “tax hiked” even further. “But then how could they? It’s the law of diminishing returns,” O’Donnell says, adding that the pub business was on its knees.
Off-licences were a different thing. Pub drinking was supervised, measured and responsible, but women in particular were drinking at home and their health was suffering, he says.
“On health grounds I am disappointed the budget didn’t tackle off-licence prices. There is a major problem with women drinking.”
O’Donnell says mistakes have been made in Tralee, to do with parking and out-of-town development, and that nine shops are closed in the Castle Street area alone.
However, he believes Tralee is getting its heartbeat back, thanks largely to a group of like-minded businesspeople who are standing up for their town centre.
But the budget had nothing specific for derelict businesses in town centres or for tax breaks for doing up existing businesses.
O’Donnell wants tax breaks in the budget for premises that are renovated, in line with the practice in other European countries. Currently, if business owners renovate premises, they are at risk of being “rerated” by the council, so in fact will have to pay more.
“The tax system is stacked against the self-employed,” O’Donnell says.
Social welfare has increased by €5 but there is still very little for the self-employed, he says.
There is very little incentive to work full-time rather than part-time, which is shored up by welfare entitlements.
The student
Steve Clifford
“Students at Ireland’s southwesterly college IT Tralee are poorly served by transport,” says Steve Clifford who studied music technology specialising in film scoring. He is currently president of the college’s student union.
Before the budget Steve said he would like to see funding for rural bus connections and a move by the State against “the over-commercialising” of car insurance.
The large increase of €500 million in the rural development budget was hugely welcome in this regard “if it goes towards rural transport”. It would benefit transport to third-level colleges and institutes of technology in Sligo, Galway and Tralee where round trips of 100km a day are normal.
Clifford is disappointed that the “over-commercialising” of car insurance, a necessity for students at rural colleges and even more costly than college fees, was not tackled. He thinks it’s an opportunity lost.
The €36.5 million increase in education was welcome “but where will it go?”, Clifford asks. This is vague and has yet to be ironed out.
“A Valentia Island student, not on a grant facility, will have to pay up to €7,000 before leaving home for Tralee: €3,000 in fees/student contribution and up to €4,000 in car insurance. He or she is priced out of going to college,” Clifford says.
He is also still calling for funding for accommodation at IT Tralee and other institutes of technology
This year for the first time, traditional student apartment buildings, in private ownership in town, are accommodating non-students.
Clifford says it is time for funding for IT Tralee and other ITs to build their own student accommodation.
