Child benefit increase and other measures offer grounds for hope
Every year I’ve walked back to my office at the other end of Dame St, usually angry, often in despair.
The anger was caused by what public policy was doing to children and families who live in a year-long struggle with poverty and all the stresses and strains it brings. The despair was because it has often seemed to me that the damage was irreparable. If you condemn children to consistent poverty, if you cut the income supports and the services they desperately need, if you reduce their life chances at a very young age, you can all too easily produce an entire generation that is disenfranchised and alienated.
From the first of Brian Lenihan’s austerity budgets, right through until yesterday, through each and every one of Michael Noonan’s budgets, I have argued again and again that those children, and many others just as vulnerable, were being forced to bear an unfair share of the austerity burden. People with an intellectual disability were included — seeing their only source of income cut again and again, and watching as the access to essential services such as speech therapy, respite care, and special needs assistants was whittled away.
VISIT OUR DEDICATED BUDGET 2015 SECTION FOR MORE NEWS AND ANALYSIS
Yesterday, I left Buswells with a bit of hope. For the first time in years, we saw an increase in child benefit — not a big increase, but so much better than the cuts of the past. We know, as a matter of fact, that child benefit helps to lift children out of poverty. The fact that this wasn’t leaked, but announced at the last minute, suggests strongly to me that Joan Burton had to fight a battle to get it. If that’s the case, I’m relieved that she fought that battle.
And I think there are grounds for hope in some of the other social protection measures announced yesterday. None of them are wildly radical, but in total it added up to a package of supports worth more than €200m. Last year’s budget cut social protection in total, as did the budget before it and the one before that.
So, in broad terms, and I’m sorry if this is stating the obvious, but listening to the two budget speeches (although they would win no prizes for oratory) was the first time I got a real sense that we had turned the corner. They weren’t the gangbuster speeches of the Charlie McCreevy era, with buckets of goodies for everyone. Rather, it was a budget constructed around the edges — with more than 90% of the spending committed in advance. But the margins had more good news than bad.
Regular readers will know that I have been wondering aloud for some time why it is that so much importance has been attached to the need to cut the top tax rate. That one cut on its own had threatened to stamp the word ‘inequality’ all over this budget. An imaginative approach to balancing that with changes in the USC will, however, mean that higher earners will have the same marginal tax rate, while lower earners will get a much-needed break.
Many of the spending measures announced yesterday will repay critical examination as they are unfolded in more detail by line ministers. It will be particularly important, for example, to see the priorities underpinning the new housing allocation. There is a considerable crisis in terms of affordable housing, and €200m will make a difference if it is wisely — and quickly — spent.
The additional investment in Tusla, the new child and family agency, must be welcomed. It would have been absurd if an agency less than a year old, and charged with really serious responsibilities, had been allowed to drift into crisis. There is a chance now that it can begin to plan for the future.
In summary, perhaps, this was a budget with a chink of light. Families who have been struggling — those forced into emergency accommodation, those waiting months for essential therapies such as speech and language for their children, those who have struggled to balance basic household bills — must know that the plan for Ireland’s recovery includes them. A great deal more needs to be done if they are to recover the ground they have lost, but a start has been made.
What will the political impact of the budget be? Will it be enough to save the Government, or to give it a fighting chance of re-election. Well, you know what the Chinese prime minister is alleged to have said in 1972 when he was asked about the impact of the French revolution on the human condition. It’s too soon to tell.
VISIT OUR DEDICATED BUDGET 2015 SECTION FOR MORE NEWS AND ANALYSIS
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
