Pringle: Budget 2025 has left many people behind and many promises broken
- Updated: 3rd October 2024
Independent TD for Donegal, Thomas Pringle, called Budget 2025, “a budget lacking any substance or ambition whatsoever”, saying it has left many people left behind and many promises broken.
Addressing the Dáil on Thursday, Deputy Pringle said Budget 2025 contains “a bonanza of one-off measures, with very little long-term planning and nothing to provide better public services or living standards.
“There have been many left behind by this budget and many promises broken.
“The budget, in so many ways, gives with one hand and takes with another. And the general public sees this as well. I don’t think they will be bought off in this way and they see through the government spin,” he said.
The deputy was speaking during Financial Motions by the Minister for Finance.
From his remarks:
Fishing
Deputy Pringle said: “The fact that this government has chosen to completely leave the seafood sector out of Budget 2025 shows that they have no interest or ambition whatsoever for the fishing industry.
“Not a single cent of additional funding has been allocated to the seafood sector for 2025. Not one single cent. And in a week when the fishing industry is potentially facing a further 22% reduction in north western mackerel quotas, which will have a devastating impact on Ireland’s fishing and pelagic processing sectors.
“This cut is a recommendation from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea and is due to years of reckless overfishing by Norway, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland, as well as the UK granting access to its waters in exchange for payments.
“These actions have severely undermined the mackerel stock and it is Irish fishermen that will suffer the consequences yet again.
“There is such an injustice to it all and yet the government refuses to stand up for Irish fishermen. Refuses to allocate any further allocation of funding to the seafood sector or to coastal communities that have been decimated because of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael inaction, despite the fact that the seafood sector gets the smallest portion of funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine,” he said.
The deputy said: “And the government may turn around and say that the seafood sector gets European funding, but so do many other sectors outlined in the expenditure report and yet they still receive significant government funding as well.
“Our fishing industry experiencing severe decline and the incredibly negative impact that this has had on workers and coastal communities warrants significant government funding and intervention regardless, and the fact that the government has refused to do this will be the final nail in the coffin for our fishing communities,” he said.
Farming
Deputy Pringle said: “We should also be supporting our small farming communities better as well. Again, this budget lacks the targeted measures necessary to assist farm families in managing the cost of doing business, which has increased by an incredible 73% since 2017.
“We need to retain the €7,000 core annual payment limit and all applicants with commonage, irrespective of parcel size or scoring achieved, should receive a participation payment equivalent to at least €120 per hectare for the first 20 hectares.
These are the ways we should be supporting farm families, not handing lump sum energy credits to every household in the country, including those households that don’t need it and where such a credit won’t make the difference to them that it could to so many others,” he said.
Energy
Deputy Pringle said: “This is the third budget in a row that this government has decided to do this and has chosen to put money straight into the pockets of energy companies, rather than the pockets of those who need it most. Because that is what the government is doing when they are giving out these energy credits. They are encouraging energy companies to continue to hike their prices.
“Why would companies ever consider reducing their prices when they know that this government are, not only going to let them keep on rising, but are actually going to pay them to do it.
“Let’s make this clear, it is the taxpayer who is paying the large profits of these energy companies and it is time to end these handouts and start putting money back into people’s pockets,” he said.
International aid
Deputy Pringle said: “Instead of funding big corporations in the way we do, we should be investing far more as well in international aid. This is something that gets overlooked in every budget.
“Ireland’s Official Development Assistance does not go far enough to meet the ever-increasing humanitarian needs and crises caused by conflict, climate and hunger. Year after year Ireland has failed to meet the international commitment of 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid, which was agreed decades ago and reiterated in the Programme for Government. We are nowhere near reaching this or meeting our climate finance commitments.
“This is a year where conflict has raged, climate impacts have continued to cause chaos, and marginalised communities in the global south continue to have their rights violated.
“We need to be doing more to assist those in need across the world, and particularly in Gaza, where more women and children have been killed by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the last 20 years.
“These are all things we could be investing in with the €13 billion from Apple. We should be investing in meaningful change for a better and more equal society, rather than accepting the inequalities that this government continues to exacerbate with every budget.
“And they do it because it suits them. It suits this government for things to stay exactly the same as they always have been. To continue giving tax breaks to the wealthy and handouts to the corporations. To continue with the privatisation of our essential services, pricing out those on lower incomes and forcing them further and further into poverty. To continue to kowtow to Europe on fishing and America on Shannon.
“It is clear nothing will ever change under this government, while Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Greens remain in power.
“The public will see this and they will see this budget for what it is, a budget lacking any substance or ambition whatsoever,” he said.
