Minister for Finance Michael McGrath has said that “very serious progress” has been made to help people as part of Budget 2024.
Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe said that “we’ve tried to get the balance right”, and added that they cannot protect everyone from rising prices.
The ministers were speaking after taking part in the traditional phone-in segment on RTÉ radio after Budget Day, where callers ask the ministers questions.
“The broad theme of the calls this morning demonstrates the impact of inflation, the cost of living, people under pressure with bills, with costs that they can’t avoid, and it reaffirms what we were trying to do in the budget,” Mr McGrath said.
Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe said that the calls were a “demonstration of the multitude of competing needs there are within our society”.
“If any budget ever offered to the country (made) progress on every need entirely, that budget would ultimately be unaffordable for the country,” Mr Donohoe said.
“What we’ve tried to do is to get the balance right, between helping those today and making sure we can continue to help in the future.”
He added: “It’s a reminder to us that underneath all of the figures, the average experiences that we talked about, are many families, many people who are having to deal with real situations with difficulty and some hardship.
“But what I hope we were able to demonstrate is that in the round, when you put together all of the different budgets that Michael and I have now delivered, we have in all of them together, been able to make progress on the issues that are being raised.
“We know we need to do more, but when it comes to the cost of living and the funding of really important services, we’ve managed to make progress on those issues, and I believe we’ll be able to continue to do that in future.”
Mr McGrath said the Help-to-Buy scheme would not be extended to second-hand homes, due to fears that it could increase the prices of second-hand homes.
“But those changes will not involve extending Help-to-Buy to the second-hand market, the reason being that such an intervention would, in my view, be potentially inflationary in respect to second-hand home prices, and would not in any way add to supply,” he said after the phone-in.
The ministers also expressed their support to deliver a fifth budget, as is set out for in the programme for government, despite speculation of a general election being called early.
“We want there to be a fifth budget in a year’s time, building on the progress that we have made,” Mr McGrath said.
“We always have to remember the reason why we are running budget surpluses, we’re in a position to bring in large budgetary packages is because we have jointly, along with colleagues, managed the economy well in recent years, and the public finance well.
“So there’s more that we can do, we can bring about further improvements in services in the lived experience of people.
“And we want to complete our work in 12 months’ time. So we look forward to budget 2025.”
Mr Donohoe said: “Michael and I want to be standing here at this time of year with another budget that will keep our country safe.
“That will protect us from the changes that are happening all over the world at the moment from an economic perspective, and will continue to be able to point to improvements in how public services are funded and how we’re helping with the cost of living.
“But the reason we went ahead for the second year in a row with 12 euro weekly changes is because we recognise that that is needed to protect people from the risk of poverty, and a real decline in living standards.
“But alongside that, we’ve always been open in acknowledging that we can’t protect everybody from the impact of inflation.
“And if any government says that we’re going to offset entirely the impact of rising prices, we’re going to create a whole set of other problems that will come home to roost really quickly and we’re not going to let that happen.”
