Tax Code
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-25
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Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow

The Deputy is doing it again. The budget will be in around 100 days' time. We need to get into an annual budget cycle. We should have a good, decent, robust debate about what the best composition of that is. I look forward to that very much, but we have to stop with this idea of an emergency budget. We have to run the country in a sustainable way.
We should not look at how we assist people purely through the tax system. When the Deputy talks about lower income people, he leaves out of the analysis the social welfare system we have in place, the significant safety net it provides and the many supports some lower income families receive, including the working family payment and the largest increase received. There are people today, who are not wealthy people, who got up at a ridiculous hour in the morning, sat in horrific commuter traffic and are looking for a bit of a break too. They are annoyed, as are their trade union representatives and employers, at the entry point to the higher rate of tax being too low.
We have not made any decisions in the round on this, but we should not be getting into divide and conquer. There is a legitimate policy debate about the threshold at which the higher rate of tax is paid.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:51+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-25