Budget 'fails' lower paid workers, claim unions

Three of Ireland's biggest unions have condemned today's Budget as failing to help struggling low and middle-income workers.

SIPTU described the budget as "unnecessarily conservative" and "regressive".

The union's general president, Mr Jack O'Connor said the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy had failed to take advantage of the €1.5 billion surplus to help lower to middle-income families.

"SIPTU is particularly disappointed at the failure to increase tax credits sufficiently to assist all workers and make progress towards removing those on the minimum wage from the tax net, and the failure to adjust the standard rate band at all — effectively regressively increasing the proportion of workers paying tax at the top rate — which is directly at variance with the commitments in Sustaining Progress," said Mr O'Connor.

Mandate, which represents thousands of workers in the retail sector and the bar trade, also said the minister had failed low-paid workers by not taking them out of the tax net.

Mr John Douglas, the union's national official, said Mandate would be insisting these workers are prioritised in the review of the Sustaining Progress agreement next year. He said the €240 increase in tax credits would be of little value to these workers in the long term.

"Tax bands should have been widened in this Budget and the minister should have introduced measures that would have increased the contribution to the Exchequer by the wealthier sections of our society, such as the horse breeders," Mr Douglas said.

IMPACT criticised the cuts in housing benefits, crèche supplements and dietary allowances as "nasty and unnecessary".  The union's general secretary, Mr Peter McLoone, said the cuts would "create more homelessness and longer hospital lists and exacerbate the plight of very vulnerable children".

He also said the Minister for Finance's failure to index personal tax bands would push more people into the higher tax band, which was contrary to declared Government policy.

However, Mr McLoone welcomed the minister's commitment to honour benchmarking payments in January.

IMPACT said the decentralisation plan for the civil service represented a "tough challenge", but welcomed the minister's commitment to implementing it on a voluntary basis and in consultation with the unions.