THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF the annual Budget brings out a huge variety of emotions from around the country.
Yesterday, insiders – interest groups, associations and organisations – gathered at Buswell’s Hotel to listen to the Budget announcement. Immediately afterwards, they gave their uncensored reactions to TheJournal.ie.
Here are the people who were not happy with the announcement.
“Shameful”
Peter Kavanagh, information and networking officer for Active Retirement Ireland:
(Video TheJournal.ie/YouTube)
“It’s a shameful Budget, it’s an unjust Budget, it’s a Budget that targets the young, the sick and the old, the most vulnerable aspects of society. And it doesn’t take into account the current circumstances of these people despite the fact they would be marginalised by previous austerity measures,” said Kavanagh.
He singled out the removal of the telephone allowance and bereavement grant as two particularly negative aspects, saying “we’ve seen even the dead aren’t safe in this budget”.
“Devastating”
Catherine Darcy, Alcohol Beverage Federation of Ireland
(Video TheJournal.ie/YouTube)
“It was absolutely devastating,” said Darcy of the excise increases in alcohol.
In the last number of years, between the VAT rate increase and excise last year and this year we’ve seen incredible increases, punitive rates which now make us incredibly uncompetitive.
She said the prices are “making the home market very uncompetitive” and that the rate increase “will make a huge impact on the tourism sector”.
Darcy said this must be addressed as “it is just simply not good enough to say we support the agri-food industry on one hand and then increase excise rates at this rate – we will just not be able to tolerate it”.
Darcy said that the announcements could lead more people buying alcohol over the border, as well as an increase in the smuggling of illicit products.
“Kick in the teeth”
Gerry Rafter, Vintners Federation of Ireland
Rafter, also on the subject of alcohol and excise, said the VFI is “absolutely devastated – we had lobbied very hard for this not to happen”. He said they had a lot of discussions with Government, “but it’s a kick in the teeth to our drinks industry that’s on its knees at the moment”.
Rafter also said that the Budget will affect jobs, particularly in rural Ireland, and that “a lot of our members are just hanging on by their finger tips”.
They are calling on the government to bring out a task force that will deal with the issues “before they wipe out the pub industry altogether”.
“This certainly doesn’t smack of job creation – believe you me, jobs will be lost,” said Rafter. “I really don’t think they give the hospitality and the drinks industry the credit it deserves for the employment that takes place.”
He said that he believes more jobs will be lost.
“Shock”
Dr Andrew Jordan – Chairman of National Association of GPs (NAGP)
(Video TheJournal.ie/YouTube)
Dr Jordan’s initial reaction was “shock”.
“Over the last three years, €160m has been taken away out of general practice for taking care of patients with medical cards under the fempi cuts,” he pointed out.
Today the Minister announced that he was going to take another €130m away so that totals up to €290m is going to be taken away for the provision of care to the sickest and poorest and most vulnerable people in our society so I find that very shocking.
He said doctors provide services and infrastructure, “so I think it’s pretty obvious where this is all going, the level of services and the standard have to go down”.
With regard to free GP care for the under 5s, Dr Jordan said that the “level of funding is totally inadequate to provide the sort of service that we had hoped”.
- Additional reporting Nicky Ryan. Filming and editing by Nicky Ryan.
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