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A SEVEN BILLION euro reduction in the deficit will not see the Government “splurge” in Tuesday’s Budget, Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath has said.
The projected public finance deficit in the summer economic statement was 20 billion euro, but that has fallen dramatically to €13 billion, with the economy bouncing back from the coronavirus pandemic faster than expected.
But McGrath said the deficit remains high and that future generations will have to be considered in spending plans.
“I very much welcome the really significant improvements in the projected deficit for this year – a change of €7 billion in a short number of months is quite dramatic,” he said.
“The deficit as forecast now, the White Paper, is just over €13 billion versus a figure of over €20 billion in the summer economic statement.”
He told RTE’s The Week In Politics: “I would make the overall point that there is a lot of uncertainty; the easiest thing for (Finance) Minister (Paschal) Donohoe and I to do would be to say we’re now going to go on to splurge, or we’re going to spend that improved deficit outturn.
“But it’s still a deficit of over €13 billion. If we can reduce the deficit faster and faster, and add less money to the national debt, that’s not a bad thing.
“We have to think of our children, we have to think of our future generations.”
McGrath has signalled that the focus of the Budget will be on addressing the rising cost-of-living pressures, as well as housing, childcare and climate action.
Social welfare recipients are in line for an increase of at least five euro across the board.
As we finalise the plans for #Budget2022 this weekend, the focus will be on securing economic & social recovery following an incredibly difficult 18 months for our country. Investing in services for our people & in infrastructure will be at the heart of it. https://t.co/JgYnA7uGmF
— Michael McGrath (@mmcgrathtd) October 9, 2021
McGrath said: “There are lots of demands and lots of challenges, right across the system, and we do acknowledge that people on core weekly social welfare rates haven’t benefited from an increase in their weekly rate in the last couple of budgets.”
He added: “We’ll see on Tuesday what progress that we can make. We are very conscious that there are really pressing cost-of-living pressures facing people at this time.
“We will do all that we can as a Government to bring forward an overall package that seeks to support people and improve living standards.
“This really is about working towards economic and social recovery.
“The economic recovery is well under way, but a lot of services came under real pressure over the last 18 months in disability care, mental health, and in a range of other areas.
“So we do want to make substantial progress in all of those areas too.”
But despite energy prices soaring over the last 12 months, the minister said an increase to the carbon tax would go ahead as planned.
He said: “The Oireachtas legislated last year for the increases in the carbon tax, out to 2030, so they will proceed.
“But they don’t all happen immediately on Budget night; in relation to home heating oil, for example, and solid fuel changes, there are no changes there until May of next year.”
“Obviously we’re faced with a new set of challenges now, which we hope will be temporary, we can’t predict what international energy prices, how they will develop over the period ahead” he added.
“But we will have, I believe, a very comprehensive package to support people to get through what we hope will be a temporary period of escalating prices.”
But Sinn Féin’s public expenditure spokeswoman Mairead Farrell said the consensus on carbon tax is changing, and that families will be unable to cope with the increases.
She said: “The whole point of the carbon tax, obviously, is to shift households away from carbon consumption.
“But at this very moment in time, we know, first of all, that there’s very few alternatives for households and, second of all, we also know that there’s huge costs, there’s rising costs in terms of energy costs for households.
“We even know that they’re projecting that will be an increase of 500 euro for over a period of 12 months. Families can’t pay that.”
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So in the end, Epic wants to use the Apple logistics system to deliver their apps to the users, but not to share their profits then.
Like when you ask Tesco to provide you with a few squaremeters in all of their shops for free to sell your products, use their trucks to deliver your goods to the shops for free and then sell vouchers for your products online and demand Tesco to accept those vouchers on their tills. And of course, if Tesco won’t advertise your product in their leaflets or try to charge you any fees for using their infrastructure, you’d sue them because of their monopolist behaviour.
@Claudia Varell: apple are taking far too big a cut of the profits and it has a knock on affect for the whole gaming industry, apple made more money off there 30% cut of ingame purchases than Nintendo xbox playstation and stadia combined did on there total sales, its madness and epic were right to stand up to them as it can be make or break for so many of the small companies that are losing all the profits to apple, the gaming industry is in danger of becoming only for the big guys and indie games have to fight so hard to even be seen never mind available to purchase
@Claudia Varell: I don’t think Tesco make a 30% profit on anything they sell, they work on a low margin model.
@Claudia Varell: In fairness, consumers own the hardware and apple have monopolized the only means of getting an app into it
Is anyone of you aware what Apples services include? Let’s say you write a book and sell it in Argentina. Do you know that you are liable for paying the correct VAT there and follow all regulations of the Argentinian market? The same applies if a German buys your book, someone in Australia, and so on. Especially for small content providers or the “Indie game developers” this is a huge barrier. You probably need to hire tax consultants in several countries or pay an agent.
If you sell through Apple, you don’t need to care. You can also give away your content for free without needing to care about distribution or anything and make yourself a name in the industry.
On top, you don’t need to sell through Apple, if you like to go on your own.
@Claudia Varell: Yeah you don’t need to care about all that as Apple don’t pay tax.. Apple taking a 30% cut, or whatever it is, just for providing the backend infrastructure for downloading to Apple device’s is absolutely extortionate. Should be done on some of sliding scale.
Apple have become very proprietary. I love their products. Hate their ecosystem.
Apple has always been proprietary. I worked there in the 1980’s and it was exactly the same then. In fact their completely integrated ecosystem is one of the things I love.
I understand that Apple are an extremely rich company that made some significant innovations years ago and have a fantastically loyal customer base but I’m not sure what their play is here.
If people can’t get the latest versions of Fortnite on their iPhone, surely they’ll get an Android or ask their parents for one?
But I guess it’s more about the principal of being able to squeeze app developers for all they’re worth so they can add more Money to their cash pile.
@Fifty Shades of Sé: You are aware that Google kicked Fortnite out of their Android Google Playstore as well?
@Claudia Varell: it’s still possible to download it onto an Android device though.
@Claudia Varell: You are massively missing the point. The entire issue here is not that they were kicked out of the store, but that the store is the only way for Iphone users to download it.
With android, that’s not the case so Google removing it from the play store doesn’t stop you from selling it on the android platform.
It’s the equivalent of not being able to download photoshop on your PC because Mocrosoft banned it from their store.
@Gavin Conran: No it’s not Gavin. When you buy a PC it’s running MS operating system, so of course you know it will run MS, Adobe applications etc. When you buy a Mac you know it will run Apple apps and ‘probably’ third party ones too, but if you expect it will run them all you didn’t sign up for the right hardware. Same with iOS. If you don’t want to part of the Apple offerings just go buy some other krap instead.
AAA gaming should have crashed in the 2010s, one of the greediest industries around.
have your say