Ordinary people “are left out in the cold” in a budget that “reads as a catalogue of handouts for those at the top”, according to Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty.
Responding to Budget 2026, he said the “hard reality” and the “big message” for ordinary people “is that you’re on your own”.
Mr Doherty told the Dáil, “I am shocked by what’s in the budget ... If you’re a big corporate landlord, a wealthy property developer, if you’re one of the bailed-out banks, this is a mighty sweet package for you.”
He said the budget abandons workers and families to look after those at the top. “No help with the cost-of-living crisis, no action to end the rip off, no break on taxes, a blueprint for the continuation of the never-ending crises in our housing and health.”
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He said election promises were “torn up and thrown in the bin”. Last year’s budget focused on cost-of-living measures and was a “sweetener” to win votes in the general election, but “you screwed workers over royally in this budget”, Mr Doherty said.
And the first impact of the budget “will be that petrol and diesel will go up tonight”.
The party’s public expenditure and reform spokeswoman Mairéad Farrell said “homelessness is at a shocking level”, with 5,000 children without a home, but neither the Minister for Finance nor the Minister for Public Expenditure mentioned homelessness. “That is outrageous,” she said.
The crisis is the result of a “weak, broken system that fails to meet basic needs” but “it should not be seen as inevitable. It should not be something that we become desensitised to”.
Labour finance spokesman Ged Nash said “this is a budget for burger barons and big builders”. The Government “has chosen Ronald McDonald over Joe and Joan Murphy, and your man from Supermac’s over the man who gets up early in the morning”.
[ Anti-populist budget offers little for middle-income earnersOpens in new window ]
He said the Government decided to keep its “solemn promise on VAT for the hospitality sector but will break a solemn promise it also made to workers about introducing a living wage in 2026”.
Social Democrats deputy leader Cian O’Callaghan said this is “a ‘McBudget’, a giveaway for fast food chains and developers that the public will find difficult to swallow”.
“Your budget awards multinational companies like McDonald’s and Starbucks millions in extra profits, while families choosing between heating and eating are denied targeted energy credits. And more children sink further into poverty,” Mr O’Callaghan said.
He said it was “one big giveaway for vested interests”.
Last year, McDonald’s Ireland made a €42 million profit. “This is not a business that is struggling,” he said. Slashing their VAT bill by 4.5 per cent will “boost their profits by millions. And all that money will be going into the pockets of shareholders and wealthy investors will not lead to lower prices”.
Donegal TD Charles Ward of the 100% Redress party, which campaigns for homes affected by pyrite, said the Government had left his county so far behind – and they were “totally abandoned”, with a defective concrete crisis and a fishing crisis.
He said the Government failed to address the potential collapse of the “entire fishing issue” from the mackerel quota cut but it “hasn’t even been mentioned in the budget – not important enough”.
Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman said that if Budget 2026 represents the best the Government can do “when there are big surpluses, it inspires absolutely no confidence in this Government’s ability to handle the more challenging economic times that it likes to warn us are on the way”.
