Voters are sending a clear message to Brian Cowen, writes Stephen Collins, Political Correspondent.
The budget priorities of the voters, articulated in the Irish Times/TNS mrbi poll, appear to contain a clear message for Minister for Finance Brian Cowen and all the political parties in the Dáil. Improved public services are by far and away the most important issue, while tax reductions of various kinds come a very poor second.
The only problem is that, on the basis of past experience, many politicians are dubious as to whether poll findings like this reflect what voters really want.They have learned the bitter lesson that voters often say what they think is expected of them, rather than what they really feel. Not wanting to appear selfish, they claim to want better public services, when they really want more money in their pockets.
Still, taking the poll at face value, the overwhelming lead accorded to putting more money into public services such as health and education must mean something. Given that improving services gets the approval of 51 per cent of voters and the next-highest priority, cutting stamp duty to help first-time buyers, comes in at 16 per cent, there is clearly a mood for some change in priorities out there in the public.
Fine Gael voters are more likely than any other set of party supporters to accord highest priority to putting more money into public services, which is probably unsurprising in light of the strong campaign waged on this issue by the party. There is also fairly uniform support for such an approach across regions and classes, although curiously there is more than average support in Munster and less in Dublin for the issue.
Some significant differences open up on the second-highest- ranked budgetary issue, which is changing stamp duty to help first- time buyers. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin supporters are all agreed that this is the second-biggest issue but Labour voters believe welfare payments to be the second-highest priority.
On the other hand Green and PD supporters give this level of priority to widening the tax bands and increasing credits so as to take people off the top rate of income tax.
There are some interesting regional variations on the stamp duty issue, with people living in Dublin according it a much lower priority than people elsewhere. In fact it comes behind taking people off the tax rate and behind increasing welfare payments as far as Dubliners are concerned.
By contrast, in the neighbouring rest of Leinster the stamp duty issue has clearly struck a chord with people and it is definitely the second priority after improved public services.
This is a reflection of the growth of the greater Dublin area into the surrounding counties of Leinster, where many first-time house buyers have been forced to move because of the prices in the capital.
For younger people stamp duty is a far higher priority than it is for their elders, reflecting the pressure they are under when it comes to buying a first home.
Increasing welfare payments comes in as the third-ranking issue, although for some categories it is a higher priority. Not surprisingly, it has a very high ranking among the over-65s, with 28 per cent of them saying it is the top priority. By contrast just 8 per cent of the 25 to 34 age group regard the issue as their top priority.
An interesting feature of the poll is that the two options in relation to income tax put to the voters came as their bottom two priorities, although some groups put them higher. In second last place was the option of widening the tax bands and increasing credits to take more people off the top rate but this option had a higher priority among certain categories.
Last of the five was the option of cutting the top rate from 42 per cent to 40 per cent. There was no significant support for this option across the regions or the different social classes. Paradoxically, Labour and Sinn Féin supporters accorded this a far higher priority than supporters of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the PDs.
It appears that although there is a commitment in the Programme for Government to reduce the rate to 40 per cent and it is a priority for the PDs, the voters are not all that concerned. Conventional wisdom has it that voters are more easily impressed by changes to tax rates than adjustments in the bands but that is not borne out by the poll.