Leo Varadkar has given the clearest hint yet that welfare payments will be increased by more than €5 per week in the Budget

17 comments

  3. Lol, the ole FG fiver a week give away, they’ve been doing this for six years at least now so it’s hardly a unique response to the cost of living crisis.

    EDIT: For some reason it reminds me of this joke.

    >A unmarried man went into the confessional and said to his priest,
    ‘I almost had sex out of wedlock with Mary.’
    The priest said, ‘What do you mean, almost?’
    The man said, ‘Well, we got undressed and rubbed together, but then I stopped.’
    The priest said, ‘Rubbing together is the same as doing it. For your penance, say five Hail Marys and put twenty in the poor box.’

    >The man left the confessional, said his prayers, and then walked over to the poor box.
    He paused for a moment and then started to leave.
    The priest, who was watching, quickly ran over to him saying,
    ‘I saw that! You didn’t put any money in the poor box!’
    The man replied,
    ‘Yeah, but I rubbed the 20 quid on the box, and according to you, that’s the same as putting it in.’

  4. Isn’t it mad just how bad things are in this country. All of the important things like housing, health and the cost of living all have “crisis” come after them. Politicians can’t answer simple questions and they don’t seem to have much in common with the people that are affected by all of these said crises. This Leo fella is the worst I think. He’s not decent, not a lot of them are.

    Ireland, Ireland, Republic of Ireland, rev them up and here we go.

  5. What can €5 get you these days? It’s like letting a starving man smell the fresh baked bread but not letting them taste it.

  7. Leo ‘welfare cheats cheat us all’ Varadkar deciding that this is a good way to boost FGs numbers. With people who most likely are not in FGs base.

  11. “The strength of the public finances”.

    It’s a great thing that our strong balance sheet has already funded a state-of-the-art metro system in our capital, a well-connected national rail service, and a health system that’s second to none!

    Oh wait, we have none of those.

    Anyway, here’s a fiver. Please vote for me, peasant.

  12. Unpopular opinion but this feels like the right policy at the wrong time. All of the cost of living measures so far seem to be focused on putting money in peoples’ pockets through payments or reduced taxes, but in an inflationary economy this will cancel out by merely increasing price pressure.

    What the government should be doing instead at this current moment is targeting measures to reduce the existing cost of living rather than inflating incomes to meet it. So much of the cost of living in Ireland is artificially high due to rates, rents, insurance, red tape and bureaucracy that could all be reduced on the government side without directly contributing to inflation the way measures aimed at consumers would.

    One of the reasons prices are high here relative to other countries is that Ireland had exorbitant overheads for more or less everything. Tackle this and you can effectively reduce the cost of living without risking throwing petrol on the fire.

    There’s no doubt that social welfare should be increased, in my mind. The pandemic showed that. But this isn’t the right time, not if nothing is done to address the cost of living on the supply side.

  15. Need to reduce government costs that can’t be absorbed by price increases. Something like a 50 percent reduction in car tax for one year as a start and as an example.

  16. Am I wrong or should it not increase €16 to keep up with 8% inflation increase last year alone? That’s if welfare payments are €205 still.

    This is too low an increase and will just continue to widen the wealth equality gap (as per past 30 years +)

  17. Government intervention in the food market would make more sense. The greatest percentage of income of the less well-off is food and rent.

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