Budget 2023 spin can not plaster over gaping wounds of cost of living and housing crises
People Before Profit has slammed Budget 2023 as an attempt by the government to put a sticking plaster over a gaping wound as the cost of living and housing crises continue to worsen.
TD and member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Budgetary Oversight, Richard Boyd Barrett, pointed to the examples of income tax thresholds for low and average workers, rent tax credit, energy credits and “insufficient” social welfare increases of €12 as measures that will fail utterly to provide any kind of significant relief for people.
He said: “Budget 2023 failed to tackle the obscene profiteering of the energy companies and the extortionately high rents and house prices that people cannot afford. Once you break through the barrage of government spin of Budget 2023 as a ‘giveaway budget’ you can see that the measures announced by the government are little more than a sticking plaster over a gaping wound as the cost of living and housing crises continue to worsen.
“You cannot hide what is in people’s pockets. People who earn €25-35,000 are set to receive just €4 per week as a result of the changes to the tax bands- totally derisory. Social Welfare recipients and pensioners are set to get a paltry €12 increase. Renters are due to get a €500 tax credit and there is to be an energy tax credit of €600- but all of this, and a lot more, will end up in the pockets of landlords and energy companies.
“What we can see is that Budget 2023 has failed totally to address the roots of the cost of living crisis. What was needed from the government was to be ambitious enough to take the radical action to control energy prices by nationalising the energy system; to cap rents and cut them to affordable levels; give proper social welfare and pension increases; and build social and affordable housing at the scale needed to tackle the housing crisis.”