Mr Ken Doyle is a senior bank official with AIB in College Green, Dublin 2. He has been with the bank since 1964.
He rates the budget seven-out-of-10 and said it one of the most impressive in the last five years. The most welcome element was the increase in personal allowances, he said. The increase in the married allowance from £6,300 to £8,400 was "exceptionally positive" and was further improved by the increases in the income tax bands.
He said unlike last year's budget these changes "will benefit people across the board". He said increasing the exemption from income tax to £100 a week would be a major help to people "down the bottom of the economic ladder".
The overall reduction in levies was also "helpful, although the drop was quite small", he said. "I think the Minister has delivered on the promises made in Partnership 2000 and that will be welcomed by all working people," he said.
However, Mr Doyle said the housing question remained unresolved after the budget and would need stronger measures. He welcomed the 600 extra local authority housing starts which are promised in the budget, but said these will be swallowed up very quickly because the demand is so large. "An awful lot more people qualify for local authority housing nowadays so 600 new houses is a minor move," he said.
He said costly land prices are behind the housing crisis and nothing in the budget has been done to tackle the problem. Despite this, he said, the incentives to provide student accommodation would help ease demand in urban centres. The introduction of a tax relieved save-as-you-earn scheme for employees to acquire shares in their employer's company was "a great measure", he said.
The announcement that share options can be exercised free of income tax "should bring a lot of ordinary people into the stock market," he said.
While the retention of capital gains tax (CGT) at 20 per cent was "good news", he said the threshold before someone pays CGT is still too low. Traffic, Mr Doyle said, was not tackled properly in the budget. "The new tax incentives for park-and-rides are obviously welcome, but in the overall scheme of things they are just a drop in the ocean". However, he said many people who worked with him would welcome the chance to travel by bus or rail with a pass from their employer which will not be subject to tax. Mr McCreevy announced that that this measure will take effect from the new income tax year commencing on April 6th.