Financial Resolution No. 5: General (Resumed) Dail Éireann — 2025-10-08 ============================================================ Michael Healy-Rae (IND), Kerry I am very glad to stand up here and support this budget. I do so on the following grounds. With regard to the VAT reduction for the hospitality sector and hairdressers, I have heard a lot of criticism by people to the effect that this is a budget for companies like McDonald's and that the VAT reduction is for them. I remind people that in the county I represent, many of our takeaway businesses and many of those fast food outlets might be under a franchise of a larger group but they are family businesses. I heard a Deputy from across these benches this morning describe it on Radio Kerry as a cod of a budget. Now, it did not exactly take an awful lot of in-depth knowledge to summarise the whole budget as a cod. I will I go through the issues that are not a cod and that are not a joke----- --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-10-08/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:12+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-10-08