Budget 2025: Measures aimed at tackling the cost of living are underwhelming for some
Budget 2025: Teacher Aisling Hughes, renter Ross Boyd, landlord Mary Conway and wheelchair user Michelle O'Shea: They are generally dissatisfied with the results of the budget.make a real impact on people’s lives? The Irish Times spoke to a renter, a pensioner, a teacher, a landlord, a farmer and others to get their assessment on how the budget will affect them.Aisling Hughes, a teacher in Our Lady's Secondary School, Laurel Hill, Castleblaney, Co Monaghan, rents a house with her mother.
She estimates her annual earnings are about €55,000 a year, on a salary scale that ranges from about €44,000 to €80,000 over a teaching career. In education terms, she is encouraged that free schoolbooks have been extended to senior-cycle students. “I’m delighted to see that. It’s an extortionate cost,” she says.
“There’s not much for the squeezed middle. We tend not to qualify for much but pay for almost everything,” she says.Ross Boyd from Dublin who is studying at UCC, Cork. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision “It’s sort of a laissez-faire approach,” he says, adding that rental prices should be “controlled” to make long-lasting change for renters, rather than subsidising rent in the short term.
“Having that extra bit of money will make a difference,” he says, adding it will provide a “bit more comfort”, though he believes he should not have to rely on special payments for his daily living costs. She will also get a €250 energy credit applied to her electricity bills in two tranches – one before Christmas and one after.
The charity Alone, she says, is a “lifeline”. She gets a call most days from the charity, providing contact and support. Alongside extended mortgage interest relief, pre-letting expenses relief for landlords is being extended to the end of 2027 under Budget 2025. She believes targeted measures that might help, such as further increases in tax breaks, could be seen as “politically incorrect”.
Her mother’s payment will increase to €298 a week plus two double payments of this amount. The fuel allowance her mother gets – paid between September and April at €33 a week – is not increasing but she will also get a lump sum in respect of this, of €300. In addition, the household will receive €250 energy credit, in two payments – one this year and one early in 2025.
“You are just small fry. It just feels like we don’t matter in the big scheme of things,” says the co-owner of Builín Blasta Café & Bakery in Spiddal, Co Galway. Fixed business expenses such as electricity and water will be ongoing costs until it comes time to sign a new contract, Killian says. While she will negotiate with other suppliers, “you don’t always get as much as you want, and sometimes you get nothing.”
Cassidy, who milks 110 cows on his family farm outside Athy, Co Kildare, went into dairying full-time in 2018. Before that his farm was mixed with tillage, sucklers and sheep. He says many farmers are pulling out of environmental schemes such as the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme because of the bureaucracy involved.
He has welcomed Government intervention to stop non-farmers buying up land for tax planning purposes. The biggest thing she had wanted to see introduced was an increased contribution towards the wages of childcare workers. Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman said there would be an additional €15 million allocated to help with the cost of wages.
Roderic-O-Gorman Cost-Of-Living Child-Benefit Usc Social-Welfare-Payments Fuel-Allowance Inheritance Disability-Allowance
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