Labour finance spokeswoman Joan Burton has described Budget 2019 as one of the most nakedly political and electioneering budgets she had experienced.
She claimed that “every sentence is designed to secure party advantage more than any other purpose”.
Referencing the publicity attracted by Krispy Kreme when it opened an outlet in Blanchardstown, Dublin recently, she likened the budget to a doughnut.
“It tastes delicious to the Fine Gaelers here and their followers in the Independents. It’s sure to go down very easily but it’s very heavy on the sugar and there’s very little of real substance, even after you’ve forked out. So it really leaves a very flat taste in the mouth.”
She warned that “budget prudence goes out the window when there is an election in the air”.
Everything in the budget was built on the basis that “the cost of servicing debt will remain stable when all the evidence points to the opposite”, she said.
Ms Burton highlighted the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report that some of Ireland’s richest residents have a taxable income of less than the average industrial wage, with many paying income tax at a lower rate than the average taxpayer.
She said just as justice must be done and be seen to be done, so it was with the tax code.
“Tax justice must be done. Tax justice must be seen to be done. The doctrine of minimum effective rates of tax is a valuable tool to achieve that end.”
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said the Government had given an additional €121 million in Hap (Housing Assistance Payment) payments to private landlords "who are creaming in the profits on the backs of the misery of those who are suffering from the misery of the housing crisis".
And he told the Government: “You then want to give them more tax relief on the money they borrow to buy into the private rental sector, which is just shocking in the extreme”.
Giving incentives to landlords to refurbish properties would give them a justification to evict tenants. “It’s unbelievable,” he said.
Solidarity TD Paul Murphy said: "It's a landlords' budget presented by a landlords' Minister on behalf of a landlords' Government with more tax reliefs for landlords who are making unprecedented profits, the highest in the EU."
Mr Murphy said the Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe stated that in the past 12 months 5,000 households had exited homelessness. "What he neglected to tell us was that more than 5,000 households in the same period of time entered homelessness with the result that the number of households that are homeless rose rather than declined."
Meanwhile, Social Democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy told the Dáil that Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe seeks permanent solutions to the housing crisis but committed funding “to the most transient and insecure solution of all, the housing assistance payment (Hap)”.
In 2008 €493.5 million of the housing budget went on subsidising private rents but in 20018 payments to landlords stood at €1 billion.
“If we stay on this course until 2022 we will be spending €2 billion a year directly to prop up private landlords,” and “there is no way to spin that as a sustainable housing solution”.
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has described as “shocking”, the Government decision to pull it proposed carbon tax. The tax was only one of many tools that were needed. “But the fact that was dumped at the last minute sends a signal about the Government’s entire approach.”
The Minister’s argument that research was needed “stuck in the craw”, because the alarm bell was sounding and “Fine Gael has hit the snooze button and said ‘we don’t care’”.
