FRESH TAKE: Budget 2026 – This time they got it wrong

THE first reaction to any Budget is often a quick scan for good news. Ten euro more in the pension, a rise in the minimum wage, an increase in the Working Family Payment are headline figures designed to sound reassuring.

But as ever, the devil is in the detail and for people on the margins, those details matter most.

The modest rises in welfare payments may appear helpful but inflation, rent or higher energy bills will quickly swallow the gains.
It’s the familiar pattern: the headlines promise relief, but the lived reality is that too many households will still be struggling to get through the winter.

Since the Budget speech, social media has been full of comments expressing anger and frustration at a harsh budget with little for people already struggling. Most worrying of all were the posts that connected relentless financial strain to despair.

The link people instinctively make between money worries and hopelessness tells its own story about the strain so many people are under. That despair is amplified here in Donegal, where rural isolation, poor transport links and limited access to affordable childcare or mental health services leave many feeling forgotten. For coastal communities, the silence on supports for the fishing industry is another blow and a reminder that the livelihoods on which places like Killybegs depend rarely feature in Dublin’s calculations.

Against that backdrop, the continuing refusal to introduce a second-tier child benefit is perhaps the most telling failure of all. Successive governments have postponed what every expert body, from the ESRI to the National Economic and Social Council, has said makes both moral and economic sense.

It’s not a radical proposal. It’s simply a targeted payment that would lift around 55,000 children out of poverty overnight. In cost terms, it would be roughly on par with the VAT reduction extended to the hospitality sector.
Child poverty is not an abstract statistic here. Donegal has one of the highest poverty risks in the country. Based on Census 2022 figures, around three to four thousand children in the county are likely living in consistent poverty, while up to eight thousand experience enforced deprivation; that’s families going without food, heat, or new clothes because they simply can’t afford them.

The numbers are not evenly spread. They cluster in single-parent households, in rural towns and in families where work is casual or seasonal. And they represent thousands of small, daily struggles hidden behind the walls of ordinary homes.
Older people, too, remain quietly at risk. The latest CSO data shows that 26 per cent of households made up of a single adult aged over 65 had the highest ‘at risk of poverty’ rate in the country. That’s one in four older people living on the edge, despite this year’s increase in the State pension.

Inflation and rising utility costs have eroded the value of those payments, leaving many pensioners still choosing between heating and groceries.
The CSO has previously noted that recent declines in poverty among older people were due mainly to one-off cost-of-living supports. Without them, many would have slipped back below the line.

The VAT cut for the hospitality sector from next July will be a welcome relief to small local cafés, BnBs and restaurants, even if the rise in the minimum wage takes some if it back.
But the reduction from 13 per cent to 9 per cent will also benefit multinational fast-food chains that hardly need the help. Are we really saying it’s acceptable to subsidise a burger franchise before ensuring that every child and older person in this country can live with dignity? That’s not just a question of economics; it’s a question of values. It’s telling that the two groups most at risk in Ireland today are the youngest and oldest. These are the bookends of our society. Both depend on the rest of us to care, to plan, and to act with foresight and yet this Budget has done little to protect them.

A Budget is always a balancing act but this one tilts heavily towards developers, homebuilders and multinationals.
The Government may see it as a steady, responsible Budget but to the families choosing between food and fuel, or the older people counting coins at the till, it’s anything but.

The Fresh Take column is written by Sabrina Sweeney and features every Thursday in the Donegal News.