Ged Nash: Calls for mini-budget to help PAYE workers

Minister, PAYE workers need a mini-budget and they need it now. Last October's budget, the first of this government's new term, managed to pull off a quite extraordinary feat. You committed to spend over €9 billion more than the year before, yet you've left working families even worse off. This is an unparalleled achievement, and all because of the choices you made. Even before Trump and Israel's war on Iran, the ESRI, in its post-budget analysis, said working families would be 2% poorer this year, with those who depend on the state for all of their incomes twice as far behind. Now roll seven months on, and the picture for PAYE workers has worsened considerably. Working people were deliberately misled by Fine Gael before they went to the polls in 2024. Your party said that PAYE tax rates and bans would be indexed every year, making sure small pay hikes would be taken home. Instead, you chose an economically stupid tax break for fast food chains, and to subsidise the bank balances of developers, against all of the expert advice, even from your own civil servants. Not the actions of a responsible government. Three weeks ago, a government that was close to losing its authority, caved into sexual interests and shelled out over 700 million euros to buy their silence for a few weeks. Nobody is saying for one minute that supports were not needed. But there was nothing in that deal, nothing whatsoever, for PAYE workers. And they know it. Nothing to help with the day-to-day challenges that now have a permanence about them. The truth is, this government has abandoned hard-working families on middle and low incomes. Money was no object before the votes were counted in November 2024. No vote-buying gimmick was too madcap not to find its way into that year's pre-election budget, in a transparent attempt to buy people's votes with their own money. The message to working people since has been clear. You're on your own. The highest energy prices in the EU, with a harsh winter ahead. Already high grocery prices, rising by a further 6.5% for the basics in the first part of the year. No sign of the promised €200 childcare rate. And sham fights this week. Shameful sham fights over college fees, rather than knuckling down and cutting costs for families. So this afternoon, the government will have a chance to show your support for PAYE workers. Labour's motion makes a very clear ask. Do a mini-budget now and put up to €1,000 into the pockets of average working families by indexing bans and credits for PAYE workers back-dated to January, bringing in a targeted €400 energy credit for households under €80,000, and introducing a €100 grocery supplement to combat high prices at the checkout. In the absence of a mini-budget, it won't be Ireland that will be going nuclear. It will be Irish workers, hit with high costs, and no sign of relief and respite. So Minister, do you plan to formally oppose Labour's motion later today, and if so, why? Minister. Deputy. Again, I think we all appreciate and we can all see the challenges that people are facing at the moment. And this hasn't happened overnight. We've had a series of, from COVID-19 to the war in Ukraine, it's impacted inflation, it's impacted overall prices, to now the most recent crisis in the Middle East, where it's been said that if you couple what happened in the 70s twice with the war in Ukraine, in terms of the impact on fuel and access to fuel and our prices, this is worse than any of this combined. So we've had to deal with what has been a cumulative impact and the need for not just a response from a direct financial support to people, but for restructure, for structural change and investment. And that's exactly what this government, to your point, campaigned on and what we were elected on and what we set out to do in our programme for government. We have a programme for government that's set out over the next five years, it's important to stress that, five budgets, five years, it's not possible to do everything in any one year. But what we've been very clear from last year's budget, and we'll be clear again in the coming weeks and months with this year's budget, is that we want to make sure that the surplus that we have, the surplus that we have because of the way in which the economy is managed, because of our focus on developing economies, of making sure that we have money to be able to invest back into our infrastructure, to our services for people who need it most, because of that surplus we are in a position where we can provide support directly to people, but also plan for the future and invest in those long-term structural changes, while at the same time making it easier for those who are out, who are working, who need our support as well. And I appreciate, and I think we all accept, that those who are working, if you take your average household, if you have somebody who's, I hate to use the one we always use, but if you're a nurse or a guard, if you're two people working in the public sector, making sure that people, that they feel the benefit when they take home their pay packet every week or every month. And we've said that we will make changes when it comes to income tax brackets, and that's something that we're committed to doing. We've made very clear that we have plans when it comes to reducing overall costs for childcare, something that can be like an extra mortgage for people, but that we also need to look at the overall access to childcare, and that's something that's been worked on at the moment. But we're also very clear in terms of when it comes to energy, because that is really where people are struggling most at the moment, in terms of energy costs and in terms of trying to respond to what has been a significant shock in the last few weeks. We want to do two things. We want to continue directly to support people, and I don't accept what you're saying, that the general person who gets up and goes to work got nothing. The reduction in fuel costs overall was to support the person who gets into the car or gets public transport and goes to work every day, and that reduction, the €750 million package between the extension of the fuel support allowance, between the direct reduction and then, yes, the specific package for the hauliers, for our food, for our farmers, for our contractors, that was with a very clear focus on an industry that now more than ever and this time of the year, they use more fuel than ever because of the time of the year and because of the production that they're involved in. So we are making sure that, because of the choices that we've made in the past, because of the fact that we have a surplus, we're investing directly and supporting people as they need it now, but we also have significant plans through our investment, an infrastructure plan through our plans, whether it's in child care, whether it's in delivery of more homes, whether it's in investment in health care and education, that we're making permanent investments and permanent savings for people. Minister, with respect, nothing that you have said on the Dáil record in response to my question will make it any easier for PEY workers between now and the Budget to get some respite and help with the high energy costs and so on that you have directly referenced and we can trace all of this back to the poor decisions that this Government made in Budget 2026 and you'll have an opportunity to make amends for that this afternoon by withdrawing your counter motion and ensuring that you send a signal to PEY workers and the self-employed that this Government is for a change on their side. You've gotten off to a very, very bad start. Working people are much worse off this year than they were this time last year and they took your own commitments pre-election at face value that that would not be the case. I'll make a prediction. When a lot of the adjustments that were made in recent weeks are exhausted very shortly, you will roll that over. The best and most responsible way of organising a financial package is to do so in a responsible, structured way in a mini-Budget that's holistically managed, that ensures that PEY workers are looked after, that their interests are prioritised, as well over the next few months and in advance of the October Budget. Working people cannot wait any longer for support. We have in the last few weeks alone introduced a support package of £750 million plus. To add another Budget essentially on top of that before we reach October, what are we going to trade off here? We fully appreciate that we need to support people in the here and now and to say that nothing is happening and nobody is benefiting, the reduction in overall costs for fuel prices impacts every single person that gets in their car or gets on public transport. What we need to do when we're looking at energy in particular is change how we actually, whether it's build our new homes or how we can retrofit. If you look at the figures alone, there's a quarter of a million households. Many people who get up and go to work have had their homes retrofitted, which is saving up to £1,100 a year. There's 73,000 homes already targeted this year for retrofitting and there's 100% grants that are available to those who need it most. I think there's about 34,000 have been provided with that support. On top of that, and this was well before anything that happened in Iran, the National Energy Affordable Taskforce was put together to make sure that we can look at overall prices, the structure, how we can reduce costs, how we look at the structure overall. The initial report and the recommendation from that was that we reduce our VAT on energy and electricity to 9% and that's a decision that was taken by the government last year and that will go out to 2030. The new report from this group will be published in the summer and again, they look at how we pay for investment in our grid, how we structure our builds and how we can bring down overall costs. There's a lot of things that are happening now, but if we keep talking about introducing budgets every couple of weeks, where is this money coming from? How would we end up having any money to do anything in the budget from October?