Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has today confirmed that Budget 2016 will be unveiled on Tuesday, October 11th, with about €1bn available to play around with.
Mr. Noonan said that two-thirds of this will be used for public spending, and one-third for cutting taxes, and he added that he believes that the ‘interim’ USC can be entirely phased out within five years.
He said “I’m saying that it will not be possible to phase out USC completely over a three budget cycle.
“But it would be possible to phase it out over a five budget cycle, understanding that after the fifth budget was in place there’d still be a tail on it – going into, say, 2021.”
The minister said that the minority government will be ‘prudent’.