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MINISTER FOR FINANCE Jack Chambers has announced that this year’s Budget will be held on 1 October.
The date is one week earlier than usual, which will further fuel speculation that an early general election is on the cards.
However, speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Chambers insisted that the Government is “absolutely committed” to seeing out its full term until March next year.
“We have to submit our fiscal and budgetary submission to the European Commission on 15 October and the week prior to that, both myself and Minister Donohoe will be attending ECOFIN and Eurogroup meetings, so 1 October is the natural date,” Chambers said.
When asked if Budget 2025 was being brought forward a week early as part of plans for an early election, he said: “Absolutely not.
“The Government is committed to running the full term. The Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and all of government have set that out,” he said.
“The fact it’s one week different from last year really is of very little difference in the context of the social welfare bill and the Finance bill which often conclude at the end of November or early December.”
Taoiseach Simon Harris moved to dampen speculation that there will be an early election, stating ”there won’t be, because we’re going to have an election next year. That’s the plan”.
“I’ve said it many, many times. It’s my intention for this government to run its full term,” he said.
Harris said it has “been long known” by party leaders and the finance minister that the dusty ECOFIN meeting and the meeting of European finance ministers will take place on 8 October.
“Therefore, it simply makes sense to have the budget on 1 October,” said Harris.
However, less than three weeks ago, former finance minister Michael McGrath told RTÉ that there had been no discussions about moving the budget day forward, instead stating that there is little scope to do so, given the level of preparation needed.
Harris told reporters today that the public are more interested in the substance of the budget rather than the date, stating that the focus is about maintaining the “good economic position” Ireland is in right now.
He said the cost-of-living crisis is still being felt by many. While inflation has calmed, it has fallen from a very high position.
“I’m very conscious of the pressures that people are still feeling in their real life. So that’s my focus, the substance of the budget, the content of the budget, the next step is to bring the summary economic statement to cabinet next week,” he said.
October’s Budget will be the coalition’s last, but the first to be presented by Chambers, who took up the role of Finance Minister last week.
The latest exchequer report shows that corporation tax receipts have helped to boost the State’s overall tax take during the first half of this year, increasing by 15.4% when compared to the first six months of 2023.
Chambers said that further progress on housing, driving affordability and supporting renters is “an absolute priority” along with strengthening living standards, but described it as “a careful balancing act”.
He said he is working in a different context compared to Covid and the “significant inflationary environment” that was seen previously.
“Ministers across government are going to have to prioritise the areas that they want to see advanced for 2025 because we have to be careful in the context of risks that are out there.
“Despite running a significant budgetary surplus, I want to be absolutely careful and think about the choices that we make.
He said that bringing a responsible approach to macroeconomic policy “is at the core of what I want to do”.
“We want to make sure in the medium to long-term, that with the additional surplus that we’re running, that we make sure that people in five-to-ten years can continue to see progress on housing, on infrastructure, so that if the economy does level off and we see some of the risks that are there crystallise, that we can continue to invest in social affordable housing and that we have that countercyclical buffer to support the future generations.”
With reporting by Christina Finn
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R.t.e is the virus.
@Martin Scaldbag: That you Gemgems ODoherty? Lol
@Martin Scaldbag: RTE is simply spreading the virus. The real virus is lack of moral courage in our leaders.
@Reasonable Responsible: so, if you were in government, what’s this moral courage you’re overflowing with as regards covid?
Would love to hear the mask brigade explain why cases have gone up dramatically despite masks being introduced.
I would also love to hear the other journo propagandists explain why the total deaths published has still not been revised down to the amount which actually died from covid.
@Vladimir Macro: workplaces reopened. Main cause of spread has been workplaces. I don’t know if masks worknor not but lockdown does.
@Vladimir Macro: masks were made comulsory everywhere in spain,
their cases have spiked rapidly and continuoulsy every day since
@Vladimir Macro: probably because high numbers of small groups are holding parties in houses, or are in a work setting that does not properly protect their workers.
@SC: Lockdowns work? If they worked, they would lock us down again which they said they wont. If it actually stopped the virus it would be gone by now no?
@Helen Farrell: If small numbers are partying together and a small number can dine together in a restaurant, does the virus discriminate against the party in the household or the diners in the restaurant.
(5 Marks)
@Kavsie: Spain is counting antibody tests in their figures, this is highly misleading as people can test positive on an antibody test for an infection they had and recovered from months ago. They conducted over 2 million antibody tests. Spain’s surge is mostly not new infections.
“Total Cases’ reported is the sum of total cases detected by PRC and antibodies tests. [source]”
Click Augusts 21 updates: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/?fbclid=IwAR3K_iPs4AZTGxnENo15RkhDW_9oOGqvzkjV5LJfbyVgFW82ZjD80XYYUZU
@SC: Agreed, it certainly does work. If you have a basement or a cellar under your house, it would be even safer down there. Life is for living not hiding. There are risks that we all need to accept as a society. There are many things more threatening to your health than Covid19.
@Vladimir Macro: correlation does not mean causation. For all we know, cases could have risen even more dramatically had masks not been mandated. I’m not 100% convinced of their efficacy, but I’m not willing to take a chance
@Vladimir Macro: https://youtu.be/QNI2ocgosgA
Carl Heneghan explained it well here.
Luke O Neill made a similar point before as well.
@Anne Marie Devlin: Equally, would it be crazy to stay locked down because we don’t want to take the chance.
Has there been any concrete data to suggest, for the first time in human history, quarantening the healthy stops the the spread of the virus.
@Reasonable Responsible: I know. I’d rather wear a mask on the bus and otherwise live normally.
@Vladimir Macro: my mind boggles at people correlating mask-wearing with the increase in cases. Cases decreased when restrictions were imposed, then increased as restrictions were eased. Is it so difficult to understand?
As for the conspiracy theorists, have you ever wondered how many thousands (at least) of people it would take to make your conspiracies work.
@Vladimir Macro: look at my reply to Bain on the numbers article yesterday.if you want I’ll repeat it word for word here, but that won’t suit your narrative, will it?
@Vladimir Macro: apologies, it was actually Franny Ando I was discussing the issue with
@Joey Navinski:
All the data is readily available.
Oops it’s not, because Facebook banned the republishing of the CDCs data correction on deaths. Reducing the actual death count by 94% in the US.
Just another conspiracy i suppose
@Vladimir Macro: lock downs work for what they were intended for. To flatten the curve. They have worked everywhere they have been implemented. No one ever said that lock downs would “stop the virus”. That was never the intention and is practically impossible until there is a safe and effective vaccine.
@Vladimir Macro: common sense would tell you why cases have gone up. The vast majority of the country has reopened. The cases we’ve had have been connected to clusters initially in meat factories and now largely in private dwellings, were masks are not worn.
@Vladimir Macro: “Just another conspiracy i suppose”
Lies, the CDC only said that 94% of people who died from COIVID-19 had an underlying heath condition. 36.5% of American are obese, 31% have high blood pressure. That puts American at a greater risk of dying COVID-19.
By he same token if you shoot someone dead, and they have high blood pressure, would you claim that you should be let off?
I’m not going to bother explaining how these co-morbidities increase ACE-2 receptors on the cell surface of endothelia cells lining the lungs, which increases the risk of fatal ARDS and blood clots. I don’t think you’d read it.
“Fauci told the ABC program “Good Morning America” on Tuesday that the CDC guidance, last updated on Aug. 26, indicates that of the people who have died from the virus, “a certain percentage of them had nothing else but just Covid.” However, people with underlying illnesses also die from Covid-19, he said.”
“That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of Covid didn’t die of Covid-19. They did,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the program. “So the numbers you’ve been hearing — there are 180,000-plus deaths — are real deaths from Covid-19. Let (there) not be any confusion about that.”
“It’s not 9,000 deaths from Covid-19, it’s 180-plus-thousand deaths,” Fauci said.
@Vladimir Macro: you lost me at “…because Facebook…”
@David Jordan: Simply put, 6% of all reported covid deaths, died solely of covid 19.
I appreciate you clearing up my misinformation.
@Vladimir Macro: maybe because they are doing more tests. The virus is still circulating (it seems it was already in Jan & Feb), so the more tests you do, the more likely you will find people infected.
Two Irish laws were enacted in March because of “the manifest and grave risk to human life and public health posed by the spread of the disease known as Covid-19″.
In March, the passing of those Acts was understandable because we didn’t know what we were dealing with. However, now that we have six months worth of information, both Acts that were enabled need to be repealed. What you think?
@Reasonable Responsible: Check out hashtag #CovidIrelandRepeal and get it out there.
@Reasonable Responsible: Well here’s what I think.
The SCOPI antibody study (that detected past infections) found that only 1.7% of the population aged 12 to 69 years caught SARS-COV-2 thanks to the lockdown by end of May. That’s just 59,500 people infected in that age group, by the end of May 1,649 had died due to COVID-19.
That gives a fatality rate of about 2%, 20 to 80 times the fatality rate of seasonal flu (flu is typically between 0.025% and 0.1%).
https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/newsfeatures/scopi-covid-19-antibody-research-study-results/
Imagine what would have happened if we didn’t control the spread of the virus, especially when the disease was new and medical treatments were best guesses and drugs improve outcomes were not yet available.
I think things have improved a lot since then, the fatality rate is lower thanks to better medical treatments and drugs and it’s suggested that the virus with the D614G mutation (now common in Ireland) tends to infect younger people, resulting in a lower death rate.
And just to point out that the antibody test used used in the SCOPI study (Abbott Architect SARS-CoV-2 IgG) was validated by the UK and US by testing it on people who previously tested positive on PCR for a virus infection and on stored blood samples from last year, it missed 0% of past infections and gave a false positives 0.4% of the time, so it is highly accurate.
Ref.:
“We do not find any indication that patients infected with the Spike 614G variant have higher COVID-19 mortality, but younger patients have slightly increased odds of 614G carriage.”
The D614G mutation might explain why 70-80% of people infected by SARS-COV-2 are now <45 years.
Volz, E.M., Hill, V., McCrone, J.T., Price, A., Jorgensen, D., O'Toole, A., Southgate, J.A., Johnson, R., Jackson, B., Nascimento, F.F. and Rey, S.M., 2020. Evaluating the effects of SARS-CoV-2 Spike mutation D614G on transmissibility and pathogenicity. medRxiv.
@David Jordan: the serology study excluded 0-12 year olds and over 69s. So we’d have to exclude all morbidities within those age groups from the figures to extrapolate an accurate morbidity rate .
@Isabel Oliveira: I don’t understand why you think morbidities are relevant to the estimate.
It’s just a simple maths, we divided the total who died by the number who were infected, that’s the fatality rate.
1.7% of the population aged 12 – 69 caught the virus
I then assume the proportion of Children 69 infected was the same, 1.7%. So I assume 1.7% of the total population aged 0 – 108 years caught the virus (Elizabeth Heaney is now the oldest person in Ireland btw).
The current population of Ireland is 4.9 million, so 1.7% of 4.9 million is 83,300 people
(this is likely an overestimate, children were less likely to catch the virus, they were out of school, and same goes for are cocooning elderly. But lets forget that for simplicity and assume the young and old were equally likely to catch the virus as those who were tested).
We then simply divide the number of deaths (1650) by the total number of infections (83,300).
1650 / 83,300 = 1.98%
Well, my initial guess was correct
@John Egan: Thanks John, that link confirms the lockdown worked spectacularly well. There was also a reduction in road deaths and other accidents that could account for the overall reduction in deaths, everyone safe at home. Flu and other contagious respiratory diseases were also reduced during lockdown along with SARS-COV-2.
It’s interesting to see that deaths among children (<14 years) decreased markedly in the US during their lockdown, on account of reduced accidents.
@David Jordan: good defence but no. Covid deaths for April stood at over 1000. By no measure does car deaths or other accidents make up that amount ( not by using any statistics any year prior to 2020) also our Quarterly year CSO report on deaths had higher a death amount for 2020 compared to 2019 by just 56. Again you can add up car deaths and flu (which you noted at being 0.2% plus any other respiratory illness and you will not be able to account for over 900 potential deaths saved.
@John Egan: What ever the cause it is welcome that all cause mortality decreased during April.
As I explained, only 1.7% of the population contracted SARS-COV-2 by the end of May, and fewer by end of April, perhaps only 1%. This is a truly massive reduction in infections and a great achievement credited to the lockdown.
Also, it’s important to rememberer that we only had 500 ICU beds of which 135 were empty on April 13 just before the peak of our epidemic. That is one empty bed per 36,296, so if more than 1 in 36,296 required ICU care, patients would start piling up in the corridors.
So it was necessary to control the spread and the size of the peak because we have so little capacity (Germany has nearly 3x the ICU beds per head of population compared to us; 29.2 per 100,000, they were taking in patients from Italy and Belgium).
So the author of the article seem to be trying very hard to portray a successful lockdown, that avoided a huge number of deaths, as a failure.
@David Jordan: The SCOPI study was based on n = 1,733. It’s been years since my statistics classes but for a population of c. 5 million, there could not be much confidence that the findings (particularly saying that c. 1.7% caught it) is representative of the population?
And before people start saying “well open everything then”, the numbers are low *because* of the steps we’re taking these steps.
@Kem Trayle: how is that? Cases have increased ten fold since the introduction of mandatory wearing of masks, they’ll still try and pin the blame on pubs and travel though
@SB: are you blaming wearing masks for the increase in cases? Please tell us you’re not.
@SB: they also increased when the price of petrol went up, but I don’t see you blaming petrol. I agree that there has been a negligible impact on numbers from pubs and travel and I do support opening the country up further, but blaming masks is ludicrous.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: This is the best comment ive ever seen. You are so right, perhaps we should campaign against the increase in petrol prices as the number of cases have increased significantly since the price went up. Whats going to happen when the cost of heating oil goes up. And yes people are actually saying the masks are causing the increase but not one of them have yet produced any scientific evidence to support the argument. I prefer your petrol theory.
@SB: 4 weeks after the initial introduction of the virus to the country, we were having new daily cases numbering between 300 and 400 and that is when we went into lockdown, at the end of March. The daily cases peaked 2 weeks later in mid April. No masks were being worn at the time. At the end of June, the biggest lifting of restrictions occured when new daily cases were numbering single digits to low teens. The current spike started 10 days later when numbers went into the 20s. The government asked us to wear masks then made them compulsory in stages. Now 6 weeks later, we still are not getting half the numbers we had at the end of March. The numbers do not lie, the masks are working.
@Joe_X: Joe I was worried you were going the other way with that comment, you are so correct. The numbers dont lie and this virus is no longer new,there is a lot of scientific research available to anyone who wishes to look it up, the masks work!
@Kem Trayle: not necessarily. There is so little transparency on anything done that it would be hard to know for sure.
Why are they always interviewed by people who ask no pertinent and bold questions ?
Aka : could you provide me with an age group of those positive in June, July & August ?
Or aka : could you cite the studies on the virulence of virus for the same months
@Isabel Oliveira: the media present are 100% corruptly compliant
they respond with as many “thank you’s” as questions
@Kavsie: and often say sorry, when following up on a question.
@John Egan: yes, I once heard an RTE news anchor ask the CMO if he had figures for some covid related deaths ( icannot remeber the exact question)
the CMO said, “I do not have those figures”
the RTE reporter “thank you”
thats where we are at.
@Kavsie:only preread questions allowed. remember few months ago when Dr Tony Holohan was asked about a death in mayo where someone was put in covid ward after testing negative but possitive at time of death he wasn’t answering so they shut off journalists microphone and went to next question
Can’t post the link..but search
Mayo student’s parents raise questions over circumstances surrounding death
Open up society or it’ll crumble
@SB: We will all be left wondering how it could have happened, in this day and age.
@SB: we are now higher then the UK and Sweden! Maby you want to chase USA or Brazil?
@Munster1: maybe another way to look at that is the UK and Sweden are lower than us and they’re all opened up and going about their lives..
so basically he is just confirming what the strategy was from day one, protect out health system, and now our elderly,…seems the figures and stats show we achieved that quite a while back
why are we ruining our country even more, not to mention our health and mental well being of our nation?
whats the hidden agenda?!!!
I heard the minister on with Pat Kenny earlier, a complete waste of time.
Now this report of another of the cabal destroying the country being asked little and saying less.
Could someone ask the to say how many active cases there are in the country now, and where they are located
It’s outrageous that this figure is not released in a daily or weekly basis routinely, but it is now over two months since it was last released per the Worldmeters website.
Many countries categorise their cases between mild and severe. The WHO website show that currently 99% og active cases globally fall into the mild category.
When is our government going to begin this practice?
The virus is definitely weakening and the powers that be are afraid to tell us. That is my (admittedly uneducated) understanding of our position in this pandemic.
@James: on which basis? There are no studies to back it up.
Maybe the hospitals have a better handle of how to deal with patients infected with it. Since it sounds like they have all their resources focused on Covid and nothing else, maybe they have made progress.
Surely these are the key features now. This virus, just like pneumonia or some of the seasonal flu’s, create a lot of risk to the vulnerable demographic but like these also, life has to go on or we will be creating far more issues in terms of homelessness, domestic violence, mental health issues, depression, suicides that will far far outweigh the numbers we are seeing in hospital ICUs now with Covid
Protecting the vulnerable was all we should ever have done, instead of these insane lockdowns.
It’s nearer the reality that The vulnerable are protecting themselves better than others.
All though it’s good news, I can’t see how we’re protecting the more vulnerable now more than March/April/May. we were in lockdown for those months. Is it the nursing homes? More testing? We are testing more and getting results faster but was there just far higher numbers of undetected Covid in those months.
cv
have your say