Dáil first for slang word as TD says workers were 'mogged' in budget

Labour's Ged Nash deployed the term, which has gained popularity online in recent months and generally means to outdo someone else

Labour’s Ged Nash (Niall Carson/PA)

Workers and families were “mogged” in last year’s budget, according to a Labour TD in what appears to be the first use of the slang term in the Dáil.

Ged Nash was criticising Tánaiste Simon Harris during Leaders’ Questions when he deployed the term, which has gained popularity online in recent months and generally means to outdo someone else.

Mr Nash was drawing a comparison between a Vat cut for the hospitality sector with a lack of indexation of income taxes in last year’s budget.

Next week, Vat is to reduce in food-led hospitality from 13.5% to 9% as part of measures announced last year.

Speaking in the Dáil, Mr Nash recounted the experiences of an “isolated” and “constantly stressed” parent featured in a recent Barnardos cost-of-living survey.

He said: “One in five families are cutting back on food due to the cost of living, nearly half skipped meals or reduced portions so their children would have enough to eat.

“In a rich country, 30% felt at some point they didn’t have enough food to feed their children.”

Mr Nash said this comes as the Economic and Social Research Institute has warned that food prices will rise higher because of second-round effects from the Iran war.

He added: “Families that are already struggling will be hit again with higher energy bills and higher grocery costs in the autumn and winter.”

Mr Nash said he could ask what the Government had done to ensure lower costs, but contended the answer would be “a big fat nothing” since it “bought its way to the last election”.

He said: “If you look at last year’s budget, let’s recall what you didn’t do: no indexation of income taxes, no energy credits, no increase in children’s allowance, and cutting of one-off cost-of-living payments.”

Mr Nash added: “The Paye workers and hardworking families were mogged, mogged by burger barons in the highly-profitable hospitality sector – your Government made the choice to give them a VAT cut.”

Mr Harris, who will deliver his first budget as Finance Minister in October, said the Government had taken a “number of actions” to assist people with the cost of living.

He said VAT had been reduced on gas and electricity bills and said the Government had also delivered the second largest package of supports in the European Union “in terms of direct assistance” following the war in the Gulf.

He added: “That didn’t just help specific sectors – though it helped them too.

“It helped hauliers, it helped farmers, it helped farm contractors, it helped people working in road transport, it helped everybody who goes to work and needs to put petrol in the car or diesel in the car.

“But also – and I’ve made this point to you before – it reduced inflation by 0.6% a month.”

He also told Mr Nash that that the hospitality VAT cut also applied to hairdressers – noting they also supplied “beard trimming”.