Finance minister Michael Noonan said this week that there will be as much as €1.2 to €1.5 billion extra in the budget for 2016 which will be equally split between tax cuts and additional spending. This follows 8 years of tax increases and spending cuts totalling €30 billion – about 20 percent of annual economic output.
USC and income tax are expected to be reduced in Budget 2016.
It is expected that the government will target the extra spending in 2016 on childcare, education, health and policing.
Mr Noonan confirmed again that the 12.5% corporation tax would remain.
Fianna Fáil finance spokesman Michael McGrath said there was “nothing new” in the Spring statement, dismissing it as a “PR exercise” and a “self-serving exercise in congratulating yourselves”.
Renua Ireland leader Lucinda Creighton said the statement was a list of scattered promises that offered no roadmap to a genuinely better way of doing things.
Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty described the statement as a “damp squib” saying “you wouldn’t need to be a bloodhound to smell an election in Leinster House”.
Budget 2016 will not be announced until October 13th 2015 – but I am sure we will get plenty of leaks about more “good” news before then.