A budget of modest payback: #Budget18 at a glance
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Ireland's working families and people on welfare are set to gain a fiver a week or more in a budget of modest payback.
But while the Republic lurches from one set of record homelessness figures to another, the minority Government took a hammering from opponents who accused ministers of repeating commitments on social housing.
And with farmers and food businesses reeling from the unknowns of Brexit, €300m of low-cost loans are to be directed at firms suffering from cash flow crises.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar set the scene for
1.2bn package of tax and spending by heralding it as a chance to give back something to Ireland's two million workers.He said average families will benefit by €500-600 a year.
But within hours of the pronouncement the government's PR spend came under fire as it emerged a new strategic communications unit, billed earlier this year as cost neutral, is set to be financed with €5m next year.
Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe told the Dail parliament the budget aimed to guard against three main threats to Ireland - Brexit, the potential impact of US trade tariffs and various geo-political threats.
Unveiling a war chest funding package, one big ticket item from Mr Donohoe was a move from midnight targeting commercial property deals with a tripling of stamp duty to bring in €400m.
That will help cover the cost of five euro a week increases to most welfare payments, including the dole and state pensions, but people will have to wait until the end of next March to reap any benefits.
And some of the money coming in will pay for modest changes to income tax, including the deeply unpopular Universal Social Charge (USC) that was created at the height of the recession.
Mr Donohoe said the top marginal rate of tax on income up to 70,044 euro will come down to 48.75% as a result of the changes.
The threshold for the higher rate of income tax is being raised by €750 to €34,550 while a new 2% USC rate will kick in at €19,372, up from €18,772, so minimum wage workers will not pay the upper rates and a second USC rate will drop to 4.75%.
Sinn Fein finance spokesman Pearse Doherty accused Mr Donohoe of repeating commitments already made for 3,800 new homes next year.
"This is a budget that tolerates and normalises mass homelessness of young people and children," he said.
* Spending on health to increase by €685m, bringing the total budget for the Health Department to €15.3bn
* A reduction in prescription charges for all medical card holders under 70 from 2.50 euro to two euro per item. The monthly cap drops from €25 to €20.
* Duties on alcohol go unchanged.
* A sugar tax from April 2018 will see an extra 30 cent per litre of tax on drinks with over 8g of sugar per 100ml. There will be a reduced rate of 20 cent per litre on drinks with between 5g and 8g of sugar per 100ml.
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* A €1.7bn investment in special education, with more than 1,000 new special needs assistants being recruited before September 2018.
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* An extra €500m for direct building programme will see 3,000 additional new build social houses by 2021.
* A new agency, Home Building Finance Ireland, to use Nama’s experience and provide cheap loans to developers was announced.
* All weekly social welfare payments to be increased by €5 starting from the last week of March. An 85% Christmas bonus will be paid this year.
* The home carer tax credit is to increase by €100 this year to €1,200 per year.
* The threshold at which people enter the higher, 40% rate of income tax will rise from its current level of €33,800 by €750 for a single person to €34,550.
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* VAT rate on sunbed services increases from 13.5% to 23% due to link to cancer from use of sunbeds.
* Brexit loan scheme of up to €300m is being made available to SMEs.
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* The State’s 12.5% corporation tax rate remains unchanged
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* A Rainy Day Fund will be established in the coming year, with at least €1.5bn euro to be transferred to it from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund.
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For more detail around all these announcements see here and find out what the various Minister’s had to say at their respective departmental budget briefings.
Read reaction from the various political parties here and reaction from the various interest groups here.
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