An Election Document
On Tuesday, the Government outlined its spending priorities for 2025. I am not sure if past Budgets have ever been properly transformative—or even had the potential to reimagine a fairer society—but Budget 2025 has firmly put this notion to bed. Instead we have been primarily served up a reheated gruel of previously made announcements and a smorgasboard of cash transfers and tax tweaks.
And when the Government has successfully reclaimed the narrative surrounding this Budget, with the entertaining schmozzle over phone pouches dissipating, we will firmly be in election season. And maybe this is how we should read and interpret Budget 2025.
If this is indeed the Government’s last significant piece of work, prior to going back to the electorate seeking another five years, then what will future Irish society be like if they are rewarded with another term? If annual giveaway budgets again become the template for governance, what pathway are we now on?
Homelessness
Considering two areas central to the work of the Centre, this budget will lead to more prisons and more homelessness. Paying close attention to the speeches by Ministers Chambers and Donohue, Focus Ireland observed that not a single mention was made to homelessness in either speech. The greatest societal crisis of the past fifteen years and it did not warrant a mention in over 13,300 carefully crafted words. Yet there was ample time to outline changes to increasing thresholds for inheritance tax.
In their rapidly produced budget analysis, Social Justice Ireland lamented the missed opportunity of using the additional allocation of €303 million to extend Housing First to families and children, rather than increasing the payment rates to those providing emergency accommodation. And, despite warnings by the Parliamentary Budget Office, the Government have extended the Help to Buy subsidy which will further drive up house prices. If we can be unequivocal about only one policy cause and effect over the last decade; increasing house prices will lead to more homelessness and housing precarity. Of this, we can bet our house.
Prisons
After a year of ramping up ‘law and order’ rhetoric, Tuesday’s Budget confirmed that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are going to campaign on a very hard criminal justice platform. One of the most eye-catching allocations was the €79m increase (or 18%) secured by the Irish Prison Service. Few other departments or bodies could point to an annual increase of this scale.
Again, very little new, just confirmation of previous announcements. There was €53m allocated in capital funding for the provision of 155 new prison spaces, as part of a five-year plan to provide an additional 1,100 new prison spaces. For comparison, services which can prevent people coming into contact with prison at an early—youth services— and late stage—Probation Service—received an annual increase of €7m and €4m respectively. In early analysis of the Budget, the Irish Penal Reform Trust are clear that “an additional 155 prison spaces by the end of the year will do little to ease today’s overcrowding crisis.” Highlighting the growing disparity of the IPS budget (€525m) and the Probation budget (€60m), IPRT point to an “overreliance on prison expansion.”
Again, and it seems too obvious to point out, building more prison spaces is not a one-off cost like public housing. Each new or refurbished place require annual staffing and maintenance costs as any new prison capacity is quickly filled. This decision by Government has brought us to a place which the 2025 budget of the IPS is more than half a billion and will likely continue to increase annually. If our multinational tax receipts were to decrease or our economy to falter, then the current cost of our prison system would still have to be met, to the detriment of other community funding needs.
Conclusion
More prison spaces and homelessness will be the consequence of this week’s Budget as the Government outlined its vision for Irish society. When TDs and Councillors come to our doors seeking our vote, they should be asked to explain these decisions.
At a time when the Department of Housing are defending their ongoing failure to meet unambitious social housing targets due to industry contraints and bottle-necks, we are to endeavour to build an additional 1,100 prison places. If there was no homelessness, prison expansion would still be the wrong approach; but at a time with almost 15,000 people ‘officially’ homeless, the allocation of resources to prison building is beyond vacuous.
