SINN FÉIN HAS slammed Budget 2024 as “one for landords” and said the health system has been left forgotten by the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Green Party coalition.

Responding to the budget announcement in the Dáil chamber today, Sinn Féin’s finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty said today’s budget should have been one focused on fixing the housing crisis, but the government “failed in that regard”.

“We needed a budget for renters, instead we got a Budget for landlords,” Doherty said.

“The number one issue facing workers and families is the housing crisis. It permeates every facet of Irish life.

“Young people left without hope, children growing up in emergency accommodation, businesses who can’t get workers, schools which can’t get teachers, garda, nurses, members of our defence forces leaving their profession because they can’t find somewhere to live.

“Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have caused the housing crisis and today’s Budget is further confirmation that they are not the ones to fix it,” he said. 

Doherty said tax measures announced today were more beneficial to landlords than tenants.

“But let’s call it for what it is, you’ve decided to put taxpayers’ money into the pockets of landlords and you couldn’t make this up, you simply couldn’t make this up,” he said.

“In this Budget, this government has provided nearly twice as much for landlords as it has to struggling renters.”

On health, Doherty said the Budget had done “next to nothing” for the health service.

“There is very little in this Budget that will give any comfort to patients or parents who are struggling to get access to basic health and basic care services,” he said.

“No urgency, no vision, no compassion, and that’s the reality. You’ve just decided to forget about health,” he said. 

“There is no new funding for additional hospital beds, there’s less capital investment than was promised in the national development plan for health.

“In fact, the health capital budget wouldn’t even keep pace with inflation. It’s real time cuts that is actually happening to the health Service, which is a crying out for investment,” Doherty added.

‘Late Late Show Budget’

Labour TD Ged Nash said the Budget was worse than a “Late Late Show Budget, with one for everyone in the audience”. 

“It’s a Reeling in the Years Budget – 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, again,” he said.

“A Budget that will yet again be found to be regressive once lump sum payments melt away like snow on a ditch, and like the Late Late Show, change the faces, the formula’s the same no matter who’s fronting the gig.”

He said the one-off payments announced in the Budget showed the government lacked vision.

“This government is woefully short of the vision we need to transform this society. €2.7 billion 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.”

Nash said budget measures would not change the economic circumstances of the worst-off: “We have a surplus, and even when we strip away any so-called windfall corporation tax surplus next year, we will still report a surplus.

“We’re the envy of Europe on the revenue side, but the poor relation on economic equality of childcare, health and housing.

“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.”

You can find full details of today’s Budget announcement in our roundup here. 

Missed opportunity to tackle child poverty

Social Democrats TD Róisín Shortall said the Budget was “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. But instead we have a Budget that is desperately short of ambition,” she said. 

“This government’s housing policy is a litany of failure. Every measure is designed to boost profit and increase costs. Nothing in this budget will change that.”

Shortall said the government’s missed opportunity to tackle child poverty was 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.

“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.”

Additional reporting from PA.

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