No gifts and Christmas cheer this year, Santa's on a budget

By Caroline O'Doherty

Charlie was big on budgets. The day came gift-wrapped in a sense of occasion, every concession presented like it had travelled all night across snowy skies just to be sure it was delivered specially for you.

Every bombshell was an extra surprise at the tippy-toe of your stocking; every cutback an avuncular reminder of what happens when you expect too much and end up temporarily on the naughty list.

For Charlie McCreevy, Budget Day was akin to Christmas and the chance to be the man of the moment whose arrival all living beings awaited with shortened breath and quickened pulse was a pleasure to revel in.

As Richard Bruton put it, his successor makes for a bad Santa. Not quite the foul-mouthed, lecherous, booze-belly movie character version - but a lumpy, grumpy, bah humbug, refuse to wear the party hat type.

Brian Cowen had an opportunity to plant a landmark in Irish budgetary history. People would talk in terms of BC and AC in comparing life before and after him and pinpoint the day he took to his feet and waved his big blue budget book around as the moment when Santa came back to town.

By comparison with recent budgets, his sack was bulging. No increase in the price of smokes. Not a cent extra to leave drinkers drowning their sorrows. No ten-to-midnight queues at petrol stations to beat the latest hike at the pumps. Tax thresholds widened, minimum wage workers exempt, stamp duty stamped into the ground, welfare payment rises generous ... in a government-defined view of generosity sort of way. Heavens, there was even a blessing to every amateur beer-brewer in the country.

This wasn't just Santa material - it was Santa, the Christmas fairy, the Easter bunny and Ray Bates all in one. There should have been squeals of delight all round, not least from Cowen who should have been brimming over with happy thoughts of himself.

Instead, he exuded all the merriment of a miscreant made don a red suit in a department store as a form of community service. For 47 long minutes he ploughed through his speech like a rusty Massey Ferguson chugging through one of his beloved Offaly bogs after a downpour. He looked like he'd rather have taken the jail time. Bertie, stuck beside him like a well-meaning but ultimately unconvinced probation officer, had the glazed look of a charity fundraiser in the final hours of a week-long stay-awake marathon.

The only bit of life in the whole non-drama was Richard Bruton's Santa analogy. So that's what it has come to - Richard Bruton saves Christmas. Maybe it should be cancelled next year.

Number crunching:

€1,270, new increased employee tax credit.

€60 increase on single tax credit.

€120 increase on married tax credit.

€29,400 is new single standard rate band.

€38,400 is new married (one income) band.

€58,800 is new married (two incomes) standard rate band.

€0 stamp duty on second hand homes not costing more than €317,500 for first time buyers.

4.4 % increased to 4.8% is the new farmers' VAT flat rate.

€44,180 is the new annual employee PRSI contribution ceiling.

€14.00 per week increase in the minimum rate of Maternity Benefit and Adoptive Benefit.

€10.00 per month child benefit increase for each of the first and second children.

€12.00 per month child benefit increase for each of the third and subsequent children.

€12 per week extra for old age and related pensions

€9.30 per week extra for retirement and invalidity pensions.

€7.90 per week for blind pension.

€0.5 million is once off being allocated to groups in National Aids Strategy.

€39 per week increase for Family Income Supplement income thresholds.

€1,000 is the new increased level of the Respite Care Grant.

€5 million additional funding for Social Economy and Job Initiative Programmes operated by FÁS.

HEALTH:

The Budget focused on a multi-million euro disability sector spending spree, but failed to introduce any measures to tackle the nursing shortage.

ALCOHOL AND CIGARETTES:

OLD reliables alcohol and cigarettes escaped. Medical experts said this was a missed opportunity to tackle drink abuse. Vintners complained of over taxation.

HOUSING:

First-time buyers will pay no stamp duty on second-hand homes up to €317,500, netting them a maximum saving of €11,550.

FARMING:

A special 100% stock relief to help trained, young farmers starting off and a 25% relief for all other farmers have been extended for a further two years.

SOCIAL WELFARE:

Increases in the levels of Social Welfare payments for the unemployed and the disabled people, rowing back from last year's Savage 16 cuts.

It also includes moves to ease pressure on those who are living in rented accommodation.

PENSIONS:

Pensioners will get 12 more each week, but there was little to encourage those still in the workforce to make plans for their post-retirement income.

EDUCATION:

Tax relief for students or parents paying third level fees was increased with the maximum amount of qualifying fees allowable for relief rising from €3,175 to €5,000 for the next academic year.

CHILD BENEFIT:

Child benefit, cited by experts as one of the best routes for tackling poverty, is up €10 to €141.60 per month for each of the first and second children.

Meanwhile, benefits for each of the third and subsequent children are up by €12 to €177.30 per month.

TRANSPORT:

Government to spend €10.2 billion on transport infrastructure over the next five years with plans to extend the funding period to 10 years.

CHILDCARE:

An extra 17,000 childcare places over the next five years under a €500m programme. Childcare funding under the justice budget for 2005 will be €85m.