Government cannot afford ‘giveaway’ budget, Taoiseach says

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said the next budget will not be a "giveaway".

Speaking in Washington DC on Monday after a report that the Labour Party was keen to deliver a generous budget, Mr Kenny said the State needed to build up financial reserves, or "buffers", in order to deal with any external "shocks" that might occur.

“Let me be clear, the budget in October is not going to be one where there’s a whole series of giveaways. We don’t have the capacity to do that,” he said.

“It’ll be slow and measured in terms of the progress that we’ve made with a very clear understanding that we are not going back to the days of what caused the problem, boom and bust politics.”

He was responding to report in The Irish Times on Monday stating that Tánaiste and Labour leader Joan Burton is pushing for the European Commission to ease back on rigid fiscal rules which would limit the scope for a generous October budget. The budget will be the Coalition's last before a general election.

Ms Burton is expected to argue in a speech delivered at Boston College later that Ireland should be entitled to spend surplus exchequer revenue coming on the back of strong economic growth this year.

Mr Kenny spoke to reporters on Monday after attending a private meeting at the US Chamber of Commerce on Washington's H Street, within view of the White House.

He said the budget would focus on getting “our deficit out of the way”.

“What we need to do is to put in buffers for unexpected shocks that might occur in the future, that might be outside our control,” he said

“We’ve had slow and stready progress, and that’s what we want from October on. We’re not going back to the days of boom and bust.”