Government failed to ensure incomes will not ‘fall off a cliff’ – Doherty

Budget 2021 repeats a pattern of behaviour that has marked the Government since it took power of being "indecisive, unprepared and too slow to act", Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty has said.

In his response to the budget statements of the Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, Mr Doherty said the budget had “failed to provide certainty that workers’ incomes will not fall off a cliff” or certainty that it would do all it could to protect their jobs.

As he criticised pay increases for politicians while the pandemic unemployment payment was cut, the party’s public expenditure and reform spokeswoman Mairéad Farrell said that Sinn Féin would cut TDs’ and Senators’ salaries.

Mr Doherty said the budget was an opportunity to “bail out workers, to bail out families at a time of great uncertainty” and to tackle housing once and for all but the Government had failed to do this.

Budget 2021: Recovery, health and businesses at centre of 'unprecedented' €17.75bn package

---

Budget 2021: fuel prices rise and high-emission cars hit

---

Have your say on Budget 2021: What was in it for you?

---

Bus and rail on track for €1bn budget boost

---

“The risk is not that we do too much but that we do too little and we can see that in the Government’s plan.”

He said €6 billion is unallocated in the Government plan “because they don’t know what to do”.

The Donegal TD welcomed the increase in funding for the re-opening of day care services for people with disabilities but said “we need to get to the point” where “people with disabilities or their families do not have to battle the State and the Government every single time for what are their rights”.

He said the Government had left those who lost their jobs or had their incomes slashed more vulnerable as he attacked the pay increase for a third super junior ministers of over €17,000 at the same time as the pandemic unemployment payment was cut.

That showed how out of touch the Government was after just 100 days in office, he said.

The increase in motor tax will affect those who can least afford a tax hike and along with the changes in VRT which would disproportionately benefit the wealthy “it is not the carrot-stick approach but the stick-stick approach”.

Vested interests

Mr Doherty said vested interests had always had access to the corridors of power. He said the financial lobby group that former minister of state Michael D’Arcy had joined had in the budget received “a little, unknown tax relief that allows some of the highest income earners earn up to € 1million salary to reduce their personal income tax by €111,000 reducing their tax rate to 28 per cent while every Tom, Dick and Harry and Sheila pay 40 per cent of tax”.

And he claimed “the Government is determined to continue with the failed housing policy of the past. Renters continue to hand a third of their income to landlords”.

He said “this crisis will remain with us for as long as this Government is in power” as he lambasted what he called Fianna Fáil’s “big idea”. It would “extend the first-time buyers’ scheme where 40 per cent of participants already have the deposit”.

He said “this is the best Fianna Fáil can come up with”.

Ms Farrell said the historic problem of absentee landlords had manifested again in “non-resident investment funds, vulture funds”. She said it was unacceptable that they were among the biggest landlords in the State, adding that Sinn Féin would introduce a 3 per cent stamp duty on these funds.

Ms Farrell also said that as “we are all in this together”, Sinn Féin would cut TDs and Senators’ salaries and it was “madness” that TDs just a year in the job had already received three pay increases.