By my count, there are 276 new spending promises in the incoming coalition’s programme for government. True, this is open to debate. Much of the programme is so vague that it may or may not involve actual commitments to do things.
I didn’t count the pledges which said the government would “continue” to do something, even though in many cases this is likely to cost more in future. And I left out the ones where it said it would “examine” things too. Some of the promises will no doubt involve inconsequential amounts of money. Some, however, will involve many hundreds of millions.
I spotted only a couple of revenue-raising measures: the promise to continue increasing carbon taxes, and the modest programme to push up PRSI rates to fund the social insurance fund. In other words, the programme is based on the surge in corporation tax — and other taxes spurred by multinational activity — continuing unabated.
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Reading the document, you get no sense of priority and little sense of urgency. If everything is a priority, then nothing is. The overriding feeling is that the two main parties have been re-elected and are taking this as the green light to carry on as before. Those awkward Greens have gone away and some Independents, many from the so-called “gene pool”, have stepped in. As a result, there’s a nod in the direction of Ireland’s climate commitments, but there is no serious discussion about achieving them. It is not helped by meaningless guff like a commitment to “support the work of young people to help their communities and promote the Sustainable Development Goals”. What does this even mean?
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Meanwhile, a string of firmer commitments in the document are in the areas of interest to the Independents. For example, agriculture, where there is an unequivocal promise to “increase scheme supports” for dairy, beef and sheep farmers. In contrast to the climate fudge, the Independents were bought with hard cash.
In many ways, the document suggests that this will be a government for its time — in line with the international trend for populism, climate confusion, rhetoric about tighter borders and dismissal of “experts.” Despite its mentions of carbon targets, biodiversity and cycle lanes, there is little conviction in the climate commitments and a move back to road investment and support for data centres.
The commitments on social supports are patchy. To take just one example, a recommendation from the Economic and Social Research Institute for a second level of child income support for families, in addition to child benefit, will just be explored. This could lift 40,000 children out of poverty and has been judged as worthy of examination by cabinet ministers since 2023. Just do it.
Is the problem here that the idea came from outside the system? Because external experts do not seem to be popular. The excellent work of the Housing Commission barely features. It was strangled at birth by the outgoing administration when it reported last summer. And there is certainly no mention of the Commission on Tax and Welfare analysis, published in 2021, that outlined a plan to broaden the tax base and raise additional revenues to pay for the bills that lie ahead in building a bigger State, an ageing population and climate change.
The better-off will, in other words, be left unworried by the tax commission’s call for higher taxes on wealth and property. And the under-35s looking for somewhere to live can legitimately ask if the new government has the required sense of urgency to address the housing and rental crisis. A target of 300,000 new houses by 2030 is not enough. While the document contains commitments to accelerate delivery and an acknowledgment of the vital role of water and energy infrastructure, it is far from clear how this will all be achieved.
Perhaps I am taking the programme too seriously. The political game is that you make sure your “thing” is in the programme — and then hope it can make the cut. The real work may start in the weeks ahead when the Department of Finance makes new forecasts for the years ahead and a fresh budget framework is drawn up. It will then become clear that all the spending commitments won’t be affordable.
The outgoing Government had a strong record of managing the overall economy — the budget, growth and job numbers were spectacular. The new administration starts in a strong fiscal position and there are welcome commitments to continue this. It’s just that these will run up against the new spending plans; we have yet to see what happens then.
In contrast, the outgoing Coalition’s record on investment and improved service delivery ranged from patchy to poor. Yet this programme does not give a sense that those set to be ministers get it in terms of the need for change, and the urgency of focusing the entire system on delivery, rather than on the kind of process-driven, box-ticking sloth we have seen in too many areas. I would be more than happy to be proved wrong here — perhaps at the highest level there is a recognition of the need for faster progress.
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The first vital job for the new government is to do whatever is possible to keep the overall economy on a good track. With US president-elect Donald Trump taking office, this is far from straightforward. Annual budgets are almost certainly going to get more difficult to draw up during the government’s term — the only question is how quickly this happens. The second job for the new government is to recognise the opportunity it has and the transient nature of this. There is a real chance to use the money now available to do important things well, improving Irish society and underpinning the economy and public finances for some years to come. If it fails, a historic opportunity will have been wasted. The period of plenty in the public finances is now.
The programme for government does not scream urgency. A new plan for competitiveness is to take a year to draw up. In the meantime, our economic model may be turned upside down by Trump. If the new cabinet does not recognise the need to prioritise and act quickly, it will miss its chance and quickly find itself becoming unpopular. Like Keir Starmer in the UK, six months after the election, they could be left wondering where it all went wrong.