Key Reads
- Main points of Budget 2025: Here’s everything we know so far about today’s giveaway budget
- The stakes are high for Jack Chambers today, the youngest Minister for Finance in more than a century as he prepares to present his first budget. Jennifer Bray profiles the man carrying Fianna Fáil’s hopes into the next election
- Pat Leahy examines if you will end up with more in your pocket after today
- Fintan O’Toole: The Government has a cash windfall but no coherent sense of how to spend it
- Stay with us out throughout the day for all your budget news. Here’s how we’ll be covering it.
- Have a budget question? Get your queries in to our Deputy Business Editor Dominic Coyle and Beryl Power from PwC who will answer your questions in our post-budget live blog tomorrow
- Find full coverage on our dedicated Budget 2025 site
Many families will gain thousands of euros over the next 12 months, as the Government seeks an electoral launch pad from today’s budget.
Tax changes are expected to increase average wages by about €1,000 and a series of one-off payments in the coming months, including €250 in energy credits and two double payments of child benefit, will be among the measures announced in Budget 2025. The Budget will be unveiled in the Dáil at 1pm. The Green Party was happy last night to secure a triple payment of child benefit as a “baby boost”.
A range of other spending commitments will amount to the biggest budget giveaway to households ever, with an election due by March of next year and expected by many to take place in November.
The Government will project a large surplus, again driven by bumper corporation tax receipts, while also setting money aside into its savings funds. The Government is also expected to announce that some of the proceeds of the Apple tax case will be committed to investment in four areas – water, electricity, transport and housing.
The Irish Times understands that welfare increases will include a €15 increase for maternity and paternity payments; a package for carers will include an increase in the Carer’s Allowance means test limits to €625 per week for a single person and €1,250 per week for a couple; an increase in the Carer’s Support Grant to €2,000 from €1,850; and the Carer’s Benefit will be extended to self-employed workers.
Overall there will be a €12 increase to weekly welfare payments, and a €20 increase in the Domiciliary Care Allowance. Student grants will also increase by 15 per cent. The Qualified Child Payment will be renamed as the Child Support Payment – and weekly payments for under 12s will be increased by €4 to €50 and for over 12s increased by €8 to €62.
Read our Budget Main Points here.
Far be it from us to put words in Paschal Donohoe’s mouth but it appears that when saying “you can’t deliver everything that is expected” he was ruling out any reduction of the VAT rate for the hospitality sector - or even part of it.
The Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe has been speaking on his way into Leinster House. “You can’t deliver everything that is expected of us. But there are many other measures contained within the Budget that I believe can make a very positive difference to small businesses across the country. Measures from a spending point of view will be outlined today to help businesses at a particularly costly time and changes will be made that will be important for small businesses. From the point of view of the taxes they pay, so many other changes are happening. The most important thing, of course, we can do to support small businesses and indeed employers of all sizes within our country is have a healthy economy that is capable of continuing to grow in the future. And this budget will deliver that.”
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly will announce an expansion of the publicly funded IVF scheme as part of Budget 2025, reports Jack Horgan Jones.
Introduced just a year ag, over 1,200 couples have availed of it so far and the first babies have been born.
Donnelly plans to expand the scheme in two areas during 2025.
First - to include Donor Assisted IVF – currently couples who require a donor egg / sperm are unable to access publicly funded IVF because donor materials are not regulated. However, with the passing of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act this year and work on the establishment of the Assisted Human Reproduction Regulatory Authority (AHRRA) underway, it will be possible for couples requiring donor assistance to access the scheme during 2025.
Donnelly is also planning to amend the access criteria to include couples experiencing what is known as ‘secondary infertility’ – these are couples who have an existing child but then have fertility issues. One element of the current criteria sets out that a couple accessing publicly funded IVF must have no living children together.
Why is it called a budget anyway? We are very glad you asked.
The word budget as we use it today was most likely coined in a satirical cartoon of the-then British prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer Robert Walpole in 1733. After he published details of Britain’s finances, a cartoon in a satirical magazine featured him opening a bag of snake oils under the not entirely hilarious caption: “The Budget Opened”.
And what was a budget? Well, in middle English and old French a budge was a small suitcase – it is part of the reason ministers still carry a briefcase into the Dáil on budget day.
And now you know.
A late night for one minister and an early start for another
The Budget is all done.... night now.
A new universal companion pass for people aged over 70 will also be introduced with everyone over that age allowed to bring family member or friend on public transport free of charge, reports Political Correspondent Jennifer Bray.
As it stands people over 70 can apply for a companion pass provided they satisfy a medical assessment but as part of Budget 2025, the Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys has secured agreement to make the pass universal for all over 70s in a move designed to tackle issues such as isolation and loneliness.
The start dates for two significant social welfare reforms will also be announced as part of Budget 2025.
Pay Related Benefit, which ensures those with stronger working histories receive higher welfare payments if they lose their jobs, will start on 31st March 2025 while the long-promised pension enrolment scheme will start on 30th September 2025.
By way of a public service announcement, if you are planning to be in Dublin city centre today you can expect significant traffic restrictions around Leinster House with a significant Garda presence and barriers installed on all the approach roads to the Dáil including Molesworth St, Kildare St and Merrion Square.
So, how do we know so much about what is going to be in the budget this year?
And was it always like this? The answer to the second part of your question – actually, it’s not your question, it’s our question but anyways – is a resolute no.
The annual budget used to be one of the most closely guarded secrets in Irish – and indeed in world – politics.
Going all the way back to the late 1940s, the then British chancellor of the exchequer Hugh Dalton was forced to resign after making a casual remark about his budget plans to a journalist that then found its way into the evening papers minutes before he delivered his speech to the House of Commons.
Can you imagine if the same rules applied today? There’d not be a Minister left in Dáil Éireann today.
In an Irish context, for donkey’s years, the budget plans of the minister for finance was as tightly guarded a secret as the Third Secret of Fatima.
Leaks were a sackable offence. Then Fianna Fáil started releasing – slightly secretly – the top lines of the budget to the evening newspapers on the day of publication. It slowly became a free-for-all and these days almost every line in the budget is flagged well in advance.
So, what do we know now? Thanks to our hard-working political reporters who’ve been assiduously mining various sources for weeks and a fairly newly found propensity amongst politicians to give all their secrets away early in the day we know almost everything.
Here are just some of the things you can expect to be announced later today.
- There will be two double child benefit payments before Christmas worth €280 per child
- The Universal Social Charge will be cut while the higher income tax threshold will rise by €2,000 with tax credits set to increase
- All welfare payments, including pensions, to increase by €12 per week
- A universal electricity credit will amount to €250 in two slices.
- The tax credits for renters will climb by €250
- Student fees to be reduced by up to €1,500 in this academic year
- There will be an extra living-alone allowance and lump sums for people with long-term disabilities.
- Children under nine will travel free on public transport from next summer.
- Parents of new-borns will receive a once-off, triple child benefit payment
- Mortgage interest relief is to be extended
- There will be free schoolbooks up to Leaving Cert level.
- 1,500 additional special needs assistants
- 350 more special classes
- Junior Cert and Leaving Cert fees waived
