“There wasn’t really anything in it for people like me,” Jane Cuppage (38), an insurance broker who rents a one-bedroom apartment in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, for €1,800 a month, says of Budget 2026.
“The cost of living wasn’t addressed at all. There’s been no kind of improvement on allowances for renters at all, and they just seem to have gone down the route of giving more money to developers, rather than giving money to the average people who need it.
Budget 2026 placed significant focus on increasing the supply of newly built homes as the key measure to address the housing crisis, meaning there was not much new to report in terms of relief for ordinary people such as renters like Cuppage.
One measure that was included to help tenants was the rent tax credit, which was extended for three years at its current level of €1,000 for an individual or €2,000 for a couple. There had been a commitment in the Programme for Government to progressively increase this tax credit, but this did not make its way into the budget.
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“Do I appreciate it come January when I do my tax returns? Yes, I do, of course. But what I get back is not even one month’s rent,” Cuppage says.
“And they haven’t changed it. It didn’t get increased, and yet rent is rising and all other costs are rising. It’s such a small amount in the grand scheme of things.”
Measures aimed at increasing the supply of new apartments, such as the reduction in VAT and corporation tax, fail to “address the immediate problem”, she says.
“I do see they’re trying to do by saying this is for the long-term benefit of everybody, but we’re in a crisis. We’re in a housing crisis and a cost-of-living crisis.
“They need to address what is going on right now and they haven’t. They just kind of skipped over it as if it’s not a reality for a lot of people.”
While she is disappointed she cannot see anything in the budget to benefit people like her, she says she is “not surprised” by the lack of measures aimed at her.
“I don’t think our current Government is really doing anything to address what’s going on because I just don’t think they live in the reality that the majority of people in Ireland are living in at the minute,” she says.
“There are generations of people in Ireland right now who have not benefited from today’s budget and possibly will never benefit.”
