{"id":88846,"date":"2025-09-27T12:44:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T12:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/88846\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T12:44:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T12:44:18","slug":"just-10pc-think-it-is-a-good-idea-to-cut-vat-rate-for-hospitality-in-budget-as-healthcare-and-housing-top-priorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/88846\/","title":{"rendered":"Just 10pc think it is a good idea to cut Vat rate for hospitality in Budget as healthcare and housing top priorities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Healthcare, housing and help with the cost of living are the key issues for people ahead of next month\u2019s Budget, according to the September Credit Union Consumer Sentiment survey index.<\/p>\n

Roughly one in three people expect some Budget boost to living standards. But 51pc of \u00adconsumers do not think the Budget will improve their living standards.<\/p>\n

\"Consumers<\/p>\n

Consumers fear a Vat reduction for the hospitality sector will leave little room for income tax cuts. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n

Today’s News in 90 Seconds – September 25th <\/p>\n

Economist Austin Hughes, who oversees the compiling of the index, said there is a sense that consumers are a bit more worried about the economy because of what he called warnings from the \u201cfiscal faithful\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the survey also indicates that most people are hopeful of some help with high living costs in the Budget. Just 10pc of consumers cited a Vat cut for the hospitality sector as one of their three Budget priorities.<\/p>\n

This is the lowest share of responses among the 13 options put before consumers in the survey.<\/p>\n

There are fears that commitments made by the Government to reduce the Vat rate for hospitality to 9pc will mean there is little money left for income tax cuts for consumers.<\/p>\n

Improvements in healthcare are still seen as a key issue, with 48pc of consumers citing this as a priority.<\/p>\n

Housing should also be a priority in the Budget, according to 45pc of consumers. Mr Hughes said: \u201cPerhaps surprisingly, housing was prioritised more frequently among the over-55s than among younger age groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

The economist said a sense of continuing strains on household spending power is emphasised by 42pc of Irish consumers prioritising cost-of-living supports.<\/p>\n

A desire to have energy \u00adcredits announced again for this year was cited by 31pc of consumers.<\/p>\n

Twenty-seven per cent of consumers indicated that easing the tax burden on workers should be a priority for this Budget.<\/p>\n

Mr Hughes said that despite strong media emphasis on and economic policy advice on the dangers of \u201cgiveaway\u201d measures in the Budget, a relatively small numbers of consumers feel it should prioritise the stability of the public finances.<\/p>\n

There were also low readings for calls to put funds aside to deal with an ageing population and for measures to prevent the economy from overheating.<\/p>\n

The survey had an index reading of 61.7 in September, up fractionally on the 61.1 reading reported for August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Healthcare, housing and help with the cost of living are the key issues for people ahead of next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[275],"tags":[10472,2107,2190,18,135,475,474,3847,8752,19,17,2108],"class_list":{"0":"post-88846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-budget-2026","9":"tag-charlie-weston","10":"tag-cost-of-living","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-health-care","14":"tag-healthcare","15":"tag-housing","16":"tag-housing-crisis","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-money-experts"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}