Taoiseach Simon Harris has revealed he will return to the United States in two weeks’ time to meet US president Joe Biden in the White House.
While officials had declined to reveal the date of the trip, saying it is normal White House protocol to only publish presidential diaries a week at a time, Mr Harris revealed further details about the pending trip in an interview with The Irish Times in New York, where he was attending the United Nations General Assembly.
When it was put to him that he would be back in the States shortly, he said: “Yes, two weeks.” His trip to Washington DC in early October comes amid continued speculation within political circles that he will call a general election in the same time period.
“I’m somewhat kind of flattered and bemused that people in Ireland, well certainly journalists in Ireland, seem to somehow or other think there’s a link between President Biden and his diary and his availability and Irish politics, which, of course, there isn’t. So there is no correlation at all in relation to election timing, and my position on that hasn’t changed.
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“I doubt it’ll be a long trip, because we’ll obviously have a budget in October, we’ll obviously need to work through all the legislation that flows from that, but it’s an important opportunity, and obviously we want to take the opportunity to promote Ireland and to promote our links with the US.”
Budget kites flying high (but don’t mention the election date)
Asked whether he would bring forward the committee stage consideration of the Finance Bill, which is due to be considered in early November, he said: “I have no role in that. It’s a matter for the line Minister to schedule those things. We have a budget to get done. We have housing targets to set, a national planning framework to agree. We’ve important legislation around mental health, defamation, all these things to progress. There is a really busy period of time ahead, and when the Government has gone full-term, and when our work is done, we will have an election.”
He said he has not picked a date.
“As the only person who has the ability to seek a dissolution of the Dáil, I’m often bemused as to how people are so certain. I keep reading it’s the 15th of November. It won’t be on the 15th of November.”
On the forthcoming budget, Mr Harris said he has an open mind on extending mortgage interest relief, that pensioners could expect a good level of increase in their State payments and that families can expect an increase in the Working Family Payment and the qualified increase payment for a child.
“There will certainly be a good level of increase in support for pensioners, for carers, for people with a disability. I do want to focus on this budget, on children. We’ve set up a child poverty unit in my department. We have to now make, I believe, a number of important targeted interventions in relation to child poverty. There’s also children who are living below the poverty line today.
“If I am fortunate enough after the next election to be Taoiseach, I want to retain the child poverty unit in my department, but I also want to give it a ring-fenced budget. It would really help turbo charge child poverty initiatives if the Taoiseach of the day had ring-fenced budget.”
He also revealed that there will be either one or two energy credits in Budget 2025.
“There will be an energy credit. We haven’t yet decided the amount. I’d expect it to be fewer than last year. We haven’t made a decision on whether it is one or two.”
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