Budget 2015 analysis: Reliefs promised for middle Ireland

IT WASN’T so much a giveaway, more a relief. The first budget in the post-austerity age, outside of the watchful eye of the troika, was all about that group that can now consider themselves the country’s greatest cliché: The squeezed middle.

These are the couples in their 30s and 40s in housing estates around the country. They bought their houses when times were good and have since seen interest rates rise, the value of their properties going down and prices going up and up.

This budget was not about the poorest in society — although there were some measures to help the more vulnerable. This was about making that middle-Ireland family, over-burdened by austerity, feel that some of the costs that currently crushing them are being lifted away bit by bit.