Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said the main aim of the 2024 Budget was to help tackle the crisis in people’s livelihoods, reports Breaking News.
The €14 billion budget package released on Tuesday includes a number of one-off payments.
These include three electricity loans worth €450; a Flat-rate winter fuel allowance of 300 euros; Allowance for independent living in winter in the amount of 200 EUR; a Christmas bonus for social assistance beneficiaries; and €250 million in one-time business support.
The one-off payment has been criticized by opposition parties for lacking “vision” and “ambition”.
Mr Varadkar responded to the view that the budget was too fragmented and said the measures were intended to raise the standard of living of citizens in a climate of rising inflation.
“The real thinking behind this budget was that, this is a budget that was about helping people with the cost of living, helping people to have more money in their pockets,” he told RTÉ.
“The objective, really of any government, is that people’s living standard should rise every year that their income should rise faster than inflation, than the cost of living. That didn’t happen last year, because inflation was so high, it was 10 per cent. I think this year, we’ll probably see incomes and inflation match. Next year, we want that to be the year where people’s incomes rise faster than prices again, and that’s how you secure a real improvement in living standards,” he added, reports Breaking News.
The budget also creates two new funds that will use multi-billion state revenues from corporate tax revenues, mainly from multinational companies, to invest in future priorities, including support for climate change responses.
Varadkar said the fund will be what people remember from Budget 2024.
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