Budget 2024: USC cuts and more household energy credits under consideration
Cuts to universal social charge (USC) for workers, a new round of up to three household energy credits, and a scrapping of the planned excise increase on petrol and diesel are being considered as preparations for the budget enter the final week.
Ministers will be meeting with Paschal Donohoe, the Minister for Public Expenditure, in the coming days as they make final pitches for their departments’ spending plans.
Minister for Finance Michael McGrath meanwhile is working to finalise a tax package in the order of €1.15 billion.
Top News Stories
- Couple with infant devastated after losing more than €5,000 in home rental scam: Looking for a place to live in Dublin is challenging at the best of times but for Havva, a PhD student, having a newborn baby and trying to find accommodation in the city from overseas made it even more difficult.
- Revealed: Tens of thousands of people have been driving for years without ever taking test: Up to 30,000 people on their third or subsequent learner permit have never sat a driving test and in some cases may have been driving for almost 30 years without ever holding a full licence.
- Vapes may be taxed more heavily under Fianna Fáil plans: Vapes would be subjected to higher taxes to discourage their use among young people under proposals being pushed within Government by Fianna Fáil.
- Citizens’ assembly set to call for liberalisation of drugs laws: The Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Use is set to recommend liberalisation of the laws around possession of common illegal drugs, according to its chairman.
- Gardaí can be ‘directed’ to work overtime on days of industrial action: Garda management can order or “direct” rank and file gardaí to work overtime on the days they plan to withdraw from voluntary overtime in a row over rosters, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has said.
- Ireland’s weather today: The country will have a mostly dry day with passing showers and spells of hazy sunshine breaking through. Duller conditions with patchy rain and drizzle in the southeast and along parts of the south coast will gradually clear eastwards later this afternoon. Highs of 13 to 16 degrees in light to moderate southwest breezes.
- Happening today: One of the men arrested in connection with the seizure of a large consignment of cocaine on a ship off the coast of Cork last week will appear in court, the process of electing the next president of the IFA starts today and Monday also marks the beginning of the RSA’s road safety week.
News from around the world
- Poland’s opposition leader Donald Tusk calls for change at massive Warsaw rally: Poland’s opposition leader Donald Tusk told a huge crowd in Warsaw on Sunday that change is “inevitable” after the country’s October 15th general election.
- More than a dozen dead in nightclub fire in Spain’s Murcia: At least 13 people have been killed in a fire in adjoining nightclubs in Murcia in southeast Spain, emergency services said on Sunday, adding that rescuers were still searching for those who were unaccounted for.
- Threat of US government shutdown ends as Congress passes temporary funding: The threat of the United States federal government shutdown was lifted hours before Saturday’s midnight deadline as president Joe Biden signed a temporary funding bill to keep agencies open after Congress rushed to approve the bipartisan deal.
The Big Read
- What makes consumers tick when it comes to the climate emergency?: Last weekend Pricewatch spoke to Dr Pete Lunn, the founder and head of the Economic and Social Research Institute’s behavioural research unit, at an event in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, writes Conor Pope. It wasn’t a casual chat but rather a public interview which focused on how we, as consumers, view the climate crisis and what shapes our spending decisions when it comes to the environment. Towards the end of the conversation we asked the good doctor how people 100 years from now might look back on this current phase of the climate crisis and how we responded to it. We were asking Dr Lunn, a scientist who deals in facts and data, to step outside his comfort zone and into an entirely speculative zone.
The best from Opinion
- Could modular homes be an answer to the housing crisis?: Since I wrote a book about the housing crisis last year I have been regularly contacted by people affected by it. Week after week, the stories of heartbreak, fear and frustration keep coming. Recently, they have included the mother with two young children who was evicted by her landlord, and then told by the council there was no accommodation. She since got B&B emergency accommodation, adding to the 1,839 families homeless across the country, writes Rory Hearne.
Culture highlights
- ‘We’d love it’: The Edge on U2 returning with Larry Mullen jnr to the Las Vegas Sphere in 2024: “Sorry to drag you all the way here to Vegas,” Adam Clayton jokes by the stage of the Sphere, where U2 are kicking off a 25-show residency this weekend. Such a drag, agrees The Irish Times, part of a group of journalists from Ireland who earlier had been taking turns doing impressions of Bono on the Brian Eno-designed turntable stage, writes Róisín Ingle.
Today's Business
- Property inflation rises by 4.1%, according to MyHome.ie: Sellers are putting houses on the market for an average of €330,000, 4.1 per cent more than a year ago, according to new figures showing property prices on the rise again.
- Ghastly modern offices need a reboot: Every organisation has a language that makes sense to insiders, but baffles everyone else. The Financial Times is no exception. Inside its London head office, people think nothing of saying things like, “See you in Nakfa at three” or, “Why is it always so cold in Pataca?” Or, “Where is Ngultrum again?,” writes Pilita Clark.
Picture of the Day
Top Sports news
- Rory McIlroy admits cap waving incident motivated Europe to victory at Ryder Cup: The new emperors of Rome cut quite the picture, as Europe – who regained the Ryder Cup with a 16½ to 11½ win over the United States – cut loose. None of the players quite managed to join those fans who somehow thought it was a good idea to dive into the lake on the 18th hole at Marco Simone Golf Club, perhaps aware that snakes inhabit the waters, but their sheer joy was unbridled. Full coverage of the Ryder Cup
- We don’t have to persist with this nonsense - get rid of VAR: Talking about referees is famously one of the most boring things you can do, like telling other people your dreams.Talking about your own history of talking about referees, and compiling statistics to illustrate the patterns of your ref-talk over time? I’m not sure anyone has even attempted anything that boring before, writes Ken Early.
Letters to the Editor
Approachable politicians
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New Irish citizens: ‘I hear the racist and xenophobic slurs on the streets. Everything is blamed on immigrants’
Sir, – Dave Robbie is right in referring to TDs as being part of the community (Letters, September 28th). This is what makes politics so interesting and exciting in this country. Everybody feels that they have a stake.
I worked in London for a time and made a habit of asking my colleagues if they knew who their local MP was. Most did not have any idea or indeed interest in knowing.
Here, everybody takes an interest. Politicians being part of the community and being able to move about freely among the people is vital to our democracy and, consequently, to our social wellbeing. – Yours, etc, Ferbane, Co Offaly.
Video & Podcast Highlights
- In the News: Bots, fakes and lies: TikTok discovers ‘covert influence operation’ targeting Ireland: What do we know about the network and its aims?
Review of the day
- Open House Dublin 2023: More than 150 buildings star in this year’s festival. Here are our favourites: Open House Dublin, the annual through-the-keyhole festival of architectural exploration, opens doors across the city when it begins next weekend, with free peeks inside all sorts of buildings, from private houses to state apartments, and from follies to football stadiums, writes Gemma Tipton.
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