IrelandMorning Briefing

Your morning briefing: the €14bn budget sees households gain from tax cuts; Israel pounds Gaza

The budget main points, an arrest in the Tina Satchwell case, and court hears woman told broadcaster she was 16 before they engaged in sexual activity

Oliver Harden and barman Paddy Brennan watch the budget at O'Donoghues Bar Merrion Row, Dublin. Photograph: Collins
Oliver Harden and barman Paddy Brennan watch the budget at O'Donoghues Bar Merrion Row, Dublin. Photograph: Collins

Households to gain from tax cuts, more spending and welfare boosts in budget

The Government on Tuesday unveiled a huge spend-and-save budget that boosted permanent spending and promised large cash giveaways in the coming months, but also channelled billions in windfall tax revenues into long-term national savings and investment funds.

With a general election due within 18 months, budget Ministers Paschal Donohoe and Michael McGrath responded to intense political pressure to increase spending on both permanent allocations and on one-off giveaways. The result was a package that will see households gain from tax cuts, spending increases, welfare boosts (including a double payment of child benefit), childcare subsidies, energy credits and – for some – mortgage relief.

Key Budget Stories

Budget 2024 main points: Michael McGrath and Paschal Donohoe have outlined a €14 billion package of spending increases, once-off payments and tax cuts – here’s the key measures.

  • Muted budget response belies the significance of the changes: Analysis: The muted reaction in the Dáil chamber to the speeches of Michael McGrath and Paschal Donohoe belied the fact that this was a significant budget that made two very substantial moves. Firstly, with at most 18 months before a general election and with the Government parties struggling in the opinion polls, Tuesday’s budget was a huge giveaway to voters, writes Pat Leahy.
  • Budget’s mortgage relief scheme opens Pandora’s box: Analysis: The huge surge of tax revenue in recent years has allowed for some really big budgets – and we now have another. The €14 billion Budget 2024 package involves another big spending package that offers payouts to households not far off those of last year – and, in the case of some mortgage holders, a good deal more, writes Cliff Taylor.
  • Mortgage interest relief: How do I apply and how much can I save?: The Minister for Finance, Michael McGrath, confirmed the details in today’s budget of what have been described as targeted mortgage interest relief measures which will cost the exchequer €125 million and save more than 150,000 home owners up to €1,250 a year.
  • What will this year’s budget package mean for you?: It might be classified as another Late Late Show budget as there was something for everyone in the audience with tax cuts, welfare increases, changes to the minimum wage and a raft of one-off measures rolled out to help people deal with the enduring cost-of-living crisis.
  • Budget 2024 families: Something for everyone in the audience: With tax savings of more than €2,000 a year on the cards for some households, Budget 2024 has, to paraphrase that Irish institution, “something for everyone in the audience”. While a raft of increases were announced on the welfare side, income earners will also benefit when it comes to their tax bills, as the income tax package exceeded the expected €1.1 billion to give greater relief across the board.

Israel-Hamas Conflict

Israel’s air force continued to batter Gaza with deadly strikes late on Tuesday. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/Getty
Israel’s air force continued to batter Gaza with deadly strikes late on Tuesday. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/Getty

The best from Opinion

  • Butchery and raw terror in Israel has remade the face of the Middle East: One of the tragedies of the Israel/Palestine conflict is that up to this horrific weekend, it could have defined the term compassion fatigue. A friend who togs out regularly in a T-shirt with the year 1948 writ large above a depiction of an old-world doorkey often has to explain what it means. News items showing rage, grief and howling sirens from Gaza or the West Bank are wearyingly familiar. But these few days have remade the face of the Middle East. The sudden vulnerability and raw terror of Israelis under mass attack on their own territory is new, writes Kathy Sheridan.

Top News Stories

  • Man (50s) arrested in connection with 2017 disappearance of Tina Satchwell: Gardaí investigating the disappearance of Tina Satchwell in Co Cork six years ago have arrested a man for questioning and sealed off a house in Youghal. Detectives arrested the man, aged in his 50s, in Youghal shortly after 5pm on Tuesday and brought him to Cobh Garda station.
  • Stardust inquests: Teen’s futile attempt to break sealed windows and rescue screaming people recalled: The futile efforts of a teenager to break sealed-shut windows and try to rescue people in the Stardust nightclub, in which 48 people died in a fire in 1981, were heard at inquests into the deaths on Tuesday.
  • Dog dirt the biggest contributor to poor quality Dublin bathing water: Dog faeces left on beaches and washed into the sea is the biggest contributor to Dublin bathing spots having poor water quality, a new report has said.
  • Woman insists she told broadcaster she was 16 before they engaged in sexual activity: A woman has told the defilement trial of an Irish broadcaster that she told him she was 16 before they engaged in any sexual activity.
  • Ireland’s weather today: Largely dry in the north and northwest today with sunny spells developing. Cloudier elsewhere with outbreaks of rain, heavy in southern parts with some thunder and lightning. Gradually clearing most places in the afternoon, but persisting near the south coast into the evening as it becomes lighter and more patchy. Feeling much cooler than recently with afternoon highs of 11 to 15 degrees in light to moderate northerly winds.
  • Happening today: Expect plenty of reaction and further detail on the budget. A series of Government departments will hold budget briefings today and it will also be debated in the Dáil. A plan for the development of a port at Bremore, north Dublin, is set to be published while the funeral of Carol Seery, who was killed in a hit-and-run collision in Dublin, takes place today.

The Big Read

Blackburn Rovers' talented young Irish midfielder Andy Moran in action against Sunderland's Jobe Bellingham during the Sky Bet Championship clash at Ewood Park. Photograph: Dave Howarth - CameraSport via Getty Images
Blackburn Rovers' talented young Irish midfielder Andy Moran in action against Sunderland's Jobe Bellingham during the Sky Bet Championship clash at Ewood Park. Photograph: Dave Howarth - CameraSport via Getty Images
  • How will Ireland plan to develop future international football stars?: In September, Andy Moran introduced himself to the wider football world. Two goals and two neat assists in the 5-2 EFL Cup defeat of Cardiff City showed Blackburn Rovers that their season-long loan from Brighton and Hove Albion is a special midfielder. Further evidence of the 19-year-old’s quality was also evident at Turners Cross last month when the Republic of Ireland’s under-21 skipper scored from a wonderful volley against Turkey.

Top Sports news

Culture and Life & Style highlights

  • Tourists in Belfast only want to hear about ‘The Three Ts’: Troubles, Titanic and (Game of) Thrones: Working as a tour guide, you tend to hear similar questions every day, from the mundane “How long is the tour?” to the frankly unanswerable

Letters to the Editor

Sir, – Michael Jansen (“Hamas attack on Israel followed years of containment and dire poverty in Gaza”, World, October 9th) rightly notes that the attack on Israel by Hamas was inevitable. Gaza has been under siege and blockade for 16 years, with 60 per cent of its people living in poverty, and tens of thousands suffering from post-traumatic stress after suffering four full-scale Israeli military attacks between 2008 and 2021. When people protested at the Gaza fence in the Great March of Return, they were met by snipers’ bullets.

READ MORE

The response of the Israeli government to the Hamas attack in recent days is shocking. It intends to punish the civilian population of Gaza, in knowing breach by a government of international law.

Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant has ordered a total siege on Gaza. “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, it’s all closed. We are fighting against human animals,” he said. The dehumanisation of Palestinian residents is the prelude to massacre. The bombs have started to fall on Gaza wiping out entire families. The statement by the Israeli ambassador Dana Ehrlich (News, October 9th) that lawyers sit with “very strict rules” observing each target is palpable nonsense.

There is no care to avoid civilian fatalities, and now starvation of the people is to be added as a weapon of war. Israel has told Gazan residents to leave the area, but they know full well that they prevent movement out of the territory. The ambassador disingenuously says people can seek safe places in Gaza, but there are no safe areas in the overcrowded enclave, as the bombs rain down.

The violence and racially based apartheid against Palestinian civilians has intensified under the current Israeli far-right government. For months we have read of teenagers shot dead, of house demolitions leaving Palestinian families homeless, of water springs blocked and Palestinian farmers being chased off their land by armed Israeli settlers. This year alone over 200 Palestinians were shot by the Israeli military, including 45 children. Yet the international community remained silent and complicit.

It is time to address the fundamental issue of the injustice that has been done to the people of Palestine, the seizure of their land and the growing armed settlements being sponsored by Israel.

It is beyond time for Ireland to make its mark by insisting on the dismantling of apartheid, and by passing the Occupied Territories Bill. – Yours, etc,

BETTY PURCELL,

Dublin 6W.

Video & Podcast Highlights

Review of the day

  • Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford: Small-time crooks and big-time bootleggers: Here’s a bit of obscure and nerdish history for you. In 1938 the American science fiction writer Jack Williamson published a novella called The Legion of Time in the pulp magazine Astounding Science Fiction. The plot of The Legion of Time hinges on one choice made by a guy called John Barr. At a crucial childhood moment, Barr will either pick up a magnet, leading him to a life of science (and the world to a Utopia called Jonbar), or he will pick up a stone, leading him to a life of mediocrity (and the world to a tyranny called Gyronchi).

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