“We are on track to recover all of the jobs lost and have more people working by the end of this decade than ever before”. Ireland’s deficit expected to be down to 1.2% and debt under 93% of GDP next year, which is slightly below the Eurozone average.
Advertisement
Ireland is “on a new path” and the top priority is to keep recovery growing, the Irish finance minister has said. Income tax credit of €5000 will be allocated to farm partnership.
He announced plans to make it easier to transfer farm ownership.
Contactless transaction limit is also set to rise from €15 to €30 per transaction.
It is one of the central planks of Budget 2016. Revaluations of homes for the Local Property Tax (LPT) is to be postponed from 2016 to 2019.
Michael McGrath, Fianna Fáil Finance spokesperson, raised an issue that Finfacts has highlighted for years – the broad rate of unemployment: “Unemployment in Ireland has fallen in recent years but the broad jobless rate is 18% when account is taken of the official number of unemployed people, together with the number of people on activation schemes and part-time workers who would like to work full-time”. This follows last weekend’s news that the government will open the spending taps by way of supplementary estimates in Q4 2015, adding another c. €1.5bn of new spending over the previous target, presumably to help create an enlarged “base” which the new European Union fiscal rules (these take effect in the New Year) will be measured against.
Mr Noonan said he would cut the unpopular Universal Social Charge (USC) which is sometimes called “the bailout tax”.
There will be no increase on tax applied to alcohol.
A typical packet of cigarettes will now cost €10.50 for a packet of 20 after this change. It’s expected to start in the low hundreds, but will eventually increase towards the PAYE tax credit of €1,650.
There will be no increase on petrol, diesel, motor tax or vehicle registration.
In another sweetener, Child Benefit payments are to go up by €5 from next year, to €140 per month for every child.
Fathers will be entitled to two weeks of leave on the birth of a child from next September, and child benefit will increase by €5.
Elsewhere, on spending there will be 600 new gardaí put into training and 2,260 new teacher places made available.
Angela Keegan, managing director of MyHome.ie said government action to address the lack of supply of new homes in certain areas, particularly in Dublin, was sadly lacking in Budget 2016.
Advertisement
Minister Howlin has announced a health budget of 13.2 billion next year.
