Government ‘feckless' with public money, Social Democrats claim in budget row

Irish Times

17-07-2025

The
Government
has been 'reckless and feckless' with public money and is following a 'cynical giveaway
budget
' last year by now 'moralising' on fiscal responsibility, a
Social Democrats
TD has claimed.
Tánaiste
Simon Harris
however accused
Jennifer Whitmore
of 'hypocrisy' and asked which one-off payment from Budget 2025 the Social Democrats would have cut from double child benefit payments, carer's allowance or fuel allowance.
But Ms Whitmore said her party had called for 'targeted' supports last year and would not have spent €100 million on energy credits for holiday homes as she accused the Government of being 'epic wasters'.
During testy exchanges on the last day of the
Dáil
before the summer recess, the budget and the
cost of living
dominated Leaders' Questions for the third day this week.
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Sinn Féin
finance spokesman
Pearse Doherty
insisted there had to be a cost-of-living package as he pointed to a 63,000 increase in the past four months in the number of people in arrears on their electricity bills.
The energy regulator issued figures showing more than 300,000 people are behind on their electricity and a further 175,000 are in arrears on their gas bill.
Irish consumers are paying 'far and above' what other European Union countries are paying for energy.
Families 'simply can't absorb this type of shock to their finances' and the Government plan is to 'cancel the energy credits they so desperately need and relied on', Mr Doherty said, accusing the Government of having 'all the wrong priorities'.
The Tánaiste insisted the Government is helping households 'in the here and now', retaining the 9 per cent
VAT
rate on gas and electricity, expanding the fuel allowance to thousands more people, reducing childcare costs, providing free school meals, books and footwear allowances and increasing public-sector pay.
[
Irish Times poll: Support for Government parties holds steady as Sinn Féin slumps
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He also claimed there had been an 'air of unreality' to Sinn Féin's contributions. Mr Harris said Mr Doherty spent a lot of time saying to the Government ''You don't understand. You're out of touch'' but he said he knows 'who owns
SuperValu
' and it was not an American multinational.
He was referring to
comments Mr Doherty made
during a cost-of-living debate when he said the supermarket chain was owned by a US company United Foods.
Mr Harris said: 'You'd have to go back a very long time to find a summer recess in which we have seen a moment of greater economic uncertainty.'
He claimed Sinn Féin did not want to talk about trade or tariffs or the '48,000 people who work in pharma in this country' and global uncertainty.
'You've never seen something you don't want to spend more money on. But we have to be honest with the Irish people. We can't just keep saying 'spend, spend, spend'.'
Mr Doherty said the cost-of-living crisis had widened significantly and 'prices across the board are pushing households to the brink'.
He added 'it's not lost' on families 'being hammered by rip-off prices' that the energy companies are recording bumper profits, with the
ESB
recording profits of more than €1 billion in 2023 and 2024, while
SSE Airtricity
made 'hundreds of millions' in the past two years.
Ms Whitmore told the Tánaiste that 'having splashed the cash in an attempt to buy votes last year, your message suddenly changed. Now that an election is no longer on the cards, one-off payments are a bad idea.'
But Mr Harris said the one-off measures served a purpose 'at a time of extraordinarily high inflation'.