Treadmill Budget will Fail to Deliver Equality

Labour leader Ivana Bacik said today that the Budget produced by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil is little more than a Treadmill Budget – just running to stand still.

Deputy Bacik said:

“Yesterday’s Budget presented the Government with an opportunity to provide a lifeline to the tens of thousands of people for whom Ireland now is not working.

Unfortunately, it was an opportunity missed.

This was not a Budget which will provide the necessary pathway or forward track to ensure that households and communities are supported through this winter and beyond.

Rather than providing that pathway forward, this might better be described as a Treadmill Budget. A Budget where the Government are spending to stand still.

Lots of money put forward for once-off measures by the Government, but ultimately no sense of forward momentum or progressive movement – no sense that this Budget will do anything other than provide a short-term quick fix which will wear off very quickly and likely before the New Year.

Indeed, the signs are that we may have to have another Budget in the New Year once the short-term measures have faded away.

In this Budget, the Government have failed to deliver with the necessary vision or ambition on a range of areas; on Housing, Care, Climate and Work. We in Labour put forward a clear programme of measures that would have addressed both short term needs and longer term structural inequality.

A Budget should draw a big picture for Ireland. It should be ambitious and show vision.Yesterday we saw no ambition and no vision.

Instead we saw a conservatism – the conservativism of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael that sees every aspect of public spending as a cost, rather than an investment. There were welcome measures to reduce costs in yesterday’s Budget, and an important acknowledgement that supports for households, businesses and communities are needed.

But at its heart this was not a Budget that works for all. A Labour Budget would instead have sought to achieve real equality:

• To provide safe and secure homes for everyone.
• To create quality well-paid jobs that move us towards a green economy, a cleaner environment
• To reform taxation to prioritise fairness and redistribution.
• And to fund a health and care system for our youngest, oldest and everyone in between.

That would have helped to build an Ireland that Works – for All.”