Budget

Over the past few years Social Justice Ireland has developed its ability to track the distributive impact of annual Budgets on households across Irish society. Our analysis tracks changes from year to year (pre and post each Budget) and across a number of recent years.  As different policy priorities can be articulated for each Budget, it is useful to bring together the cumulative effect of policy changes on various household types.

In today's article, we examine effective income tax rates for different household-types in Ireland after Budget 2021, and compare them with rates in previous years.

Budget 2021 allocated €867m to Ireland’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) programme; an increase of approximately €30m on the amount pledged in Budget 2020. In these difficult and uncertain times, such a move is warmly welcomed. Time now for Government to publish a pathway towards our UN-agreed target.

Although the potential for a hard-Brexit has been overshadowed by the challenges of Coivd-19 during recent months, the potential for sudden and significant changes in economic activity and living standards from January 1st 2021 remains a major threat.

Budget 2021 was the first chance for this Government to show how seriously it is taking its commitment to the creation of a new social contract. Click here to see some of the opportunies regrettably missed.

Social Justice Ireland welcomes progress in Budget 2021on carbon tax, and the commitment to ringfence this revenue for sustainability measures.  However we are still a considerable distance from a Just Transtion and the compensation meausures in Budget 2021 are not as comprehensive as they could have been.  

In advance of the first budget from the current Government, it is important to remember three things: (i) the primary focus should be on increasing employment and delivering infrastructure and services, NOT on deficit reduction; (ii) a huge amount of borrowing will be needed in the next three years, and probably more again after that, and (iii) this borrowing is affordable and is the correct thing to do for the future of the economy and society.