Monthly Archives: September 2022

On the face of it, Budget 2023 was a giveaway of epic proportions. There was something for everyone. Tax cuts, welfare increases, childcare subsidies, reduced student fees, an end to hospital charges and energy cost supports for businesses and households. These were just some of the plethora of attention-grabbing measures announced.

But, what the government appears to have given with one hand, rising prices will more than take away with the other. According to the government’s own economic projections, consumer prices will have increased by 16% between the beginning of 2022 and the end of 2023. Budget measures will help cushion that blow to purchasing power, but for too many people on the margins it won’t be enough. Everyone will feel the pinch, and more people will be pushed into poverty.

*** This article was first published at thejournal.ie on 28 September 2022 ***

Sometimes good news is bad news. News a month out from your annual budget announcement that the public coffers were brimming with unanticipated largesse was the last thing Paschal Donohue will have wanted to hear. Why?

The natural and understandable inclination of any Irish finance minister, and of the Department at their back, is to be conservative, to guard jealously the public purse strings and to manage downwards the expectations of both colleagues and punters. Someone has to take away the punch bowl before the party gets out of hand. This is an inclination inherited a century ago from His Majesty’s Treasury, the so-called ’Treasury view’.

A year ago, the Irish government was expecting an €8.3bn for 2022. As things stand now, we are on course for the largest annual surplus since at least 2006, largely due to gravity-defying corporation tax receipts.

*** This article was first published at thejournal.ie on 25 September 2022 ***

Reported homelessness is at a record high. Unreported homelessness is rampant. Around 50,000 Ukrainian refugees are in emergency shelter. The shortage of student accommodation seems worse than ever despite all the recent investment in that sector. Demand for rental properties races ahead, but supply is at a record low. Surging rents, sub-standard accommodation and insecure tenure are a huge source of stress, anxiety and frustration, and our still-dysfunctional housing market is largely to blame.

When detailed results of the 2021 Census are published, well over half a million households are likely to be in rented accommodation, about a third of the total and rising. While these are concentrated in younger age cohorts, around 1 in 4 householders in their 40’s are in rented accommodation, and this share is also likely to rise as ‘generation rent’ ages. About 1 in 7 renters are estimated to be renting by choice, but the vast majority would rather be owners.

*** This article was first published at thejournal.ie on 19 September 2022 ***