'Budget 2025 was billed as biggest ever bonanza but turned into the Bike Shed Budget'
'It’s hard to take a “budget” seriously by a Government who don’t seem to know the first thing about estimates of expenditure'
by Larissa Nolan · Irish MirrorIt was billed as the biggest-ever bonanza, but it turned into the Bike Shed Budget.
No matter what giveaway goodies were triumphantly announced, it didn’t matter. Double child benefit payments, baby boosts, €1,000 for renters, €250 universal electricity credits, free travel for kids, free school books, tax breaks left right and centre, unprecedented spends in social welfare and health.
Still - everyone was thinking the same thing: the bike shed. The €336,000 elephant in the room.
READ MORE: Simon Harris: Budget 2025 puts more than €2 billion back in people’s pockets before Christmas
It was a pity for the very earnest Jack Chambers, delivering his first budget, the youngest finance minister in 100 years, a €10.5billion national responsibility on his shoulders.
He looked younger than his 33 years, as he stepped into position, sitting on the same row as Taoiseach Simon Harris, 37, who seemed like an elder lemon in comparison.
Wearing a sober black suit, white shirt and dark green tie, there was the air of the schoolboy about him, with his proud parents and siblings present in the visitor’s gallery.
Don’t be fooled: this high-achiever - who has both medical and law degrees and likely the future Fianna Fail leader - was well able to deliver.
But the more Chambers - and Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe - gushed about “value for money” the more the Leinster House bike shelter loomed into our minds.
I got a flash of the security hut with the Trump-hair roof on it; a glimpse of a half a million Ukrainian prefab. I thought someone in the packed Dail chamber would burst when Chambers lectured about the “careful and prudent management of the State’s resources.”
We got to an hour in - and onto Paschal’s speech - when Sinn Fein’s finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty was the first one to finally crack.
Donohoe was mid-flow, allocating billions to housing and heritage when Doherty hollered: “What about the bike shed?!” From there, we could have played Bike Shed Bingo, the number of times it was mentioned - repeatedly - by absolutely everyone in Opposition.
Add in the security hut (€1.5m), the out-of-control Children’s Hospital project (at €2bn plus, the most expensive in the world) and the modular units for Ukrainians (€442,000), which Doherty said: “cost more than semi-Ds built with bricks and mortar.”
What about them?
Timing is everything. Was this a splurge by a state with more money than sense?
For all the fanfare, it’s hard to take a “budget” seriously by a Government who don’t seem to know the first thing about estimates of expenditure.
The run of spending scandals at the OPW ruined the day in what was supposed to be a budget that would buy voters ahead of the upcoming general election.
They would have got away with it, if it wasn’t for those pesky kids in Public Works. As a result, Doherty had an easy time laying into the government for its failures, even on the day of one of the greatest giveaway budgets ever.
Referring to the spending scandals, he said the Government had been “exposed over and over again as serial wasters” adding: “Ye have squandered money and time.”
He was in Big Jim Larkin mode when he pointed out they had done nothing to address the housing crisis, despite record rents, record homelessness and record house prices.
“It isn’t a giveaway budget,” he said. “It’s a giving up on housing budget” and said the €1,000 rent credit was “really going into the pockets of the landlords.”
He highlighted how the Housing Department had ignored its own housing commission advice for a “radical reset”.
It needled Donohue and Simon Harris - sitting beside him - into heckling, with Doherty sneering: “The truth hurts, as we can see from the heckling.”
The only time Doherty tripped up was right at the end, when he left an open goal by calling for an election. With Fine Gael rising in the polls - and Sinn Fein at their lowest levels for years - it was a rallying cry that made Harris and crew laugh out loud.
Opposition TDs lined up to tell the Government how the public “would not be fooled” by the budget, and would “see through the spin”. Time will tell.
But perhaps they'd want to think about calling the election sooner rather than later, with the giveaway money still in pockets, before another Bike Shed story breaks.
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