Sir, - We have never been incensed by a Budget before but this one has really angered us. The idea of giving a better tax regime to a married couple where both are working outside the home than to a couple with a single income is so obviously unjust and offensive that it beggars belief as to how it got through at all.
The husband in this family is a teacher, and his colleagues whose spouses are working will now have a substantial tax relief not available to us. They are already better off with their double income, and now for no good reason their lot improves even more. It's supposed to be taking into account the greater costs of having both working, but this doesn't make sense. A married couple with both working may have no children, or their children may have grown up while ours are still in school, so our expenses are in fact greater! Much might also be said about the meagre increase in child benefit and the imbalance of giving more to the well-off than to the poor, but we've come to expect these kinds of inequalities in Budgets. What a millennium opportunity lost! And they wonder why people are cynical. - Yours, etc.,
Brendan and Marie O'Regan, Ticknock Lane, Arklow, Co Wicklow.