ICTU General Secretary Owen Reidy acknowledged a number of positive measures in Budget 2024 but warned that the Budget contains some major pitfalls that will make it even harder to address the challenges facing the country. Mr Reidy said: ‘ICTU acknowledges and welcomes a number of positive measures in Budget 2024 of benefit to workers across the country'.
The 25 percent reduction in childcare fees from September 2024 will help to lower what are still among the highest childcare fees for parents in Europe.
The extension of the provision of free school books, workbooks, and copybooks to junior certificate level from September 2024, and the reduction in third-level fees are steps towards the provision of genuinely free education.
The announcements about savings funds, the Future Ireland Fund, and the Infrastructure, Climate, and Nature Fund, will help address changing demographics and the green transition and prepare Ireland for future recessions.
We welcome in principle the announcement that Government is to bring forward proposals on a new pay-related benefit in advance of the Social Welfare Bill and await the details.
In other ways, however, the Government has only partially addressed the enormous challenges facing households, particularly the cost of living difficulties facing low-paid workers and households on low incomes.
The €1.40 increase in the minimum wage to €12.70 from January represents some progress towards a real living wage but still leaves the minimum wage below the rate of €14.80 for 2023/2024 as estimated by the Living Wage Technical Group.
The €12 increase in welfare rates is below the steep increase in prices over the past year. If one-off measures are deemed necessary to improve income adequacy, then core rates need to be increased on a permanent basis and benchmarked against the median earnings of full-time workers..
Most importantly, the Budget contains a number of measures that make it even harder to address the major challenges the country is facing and will face over the coming years.
The tax breaks for landlords will do almost nothing to increase rental supply and make the taxation system even more regressive. The tax cuts that primarily benefit the better off will only further fuel inflation and narrow the tax base, and run counter to the widely acknowledged need for government revenue as a share of national income to increase to enable the country to meet the challenges posed by a growing and ageing population and climate change.
‘ICTU acknowledges that a number of measures announced today will benefit workers and households across the country but believes that the regressive tax measures will make it even harder to address major challenges facing the country in the years ahead’, Mr. Reidy concluded.
