No increase to maximum payment levels for Jobseekers pay related benefit in Budget 2027.

[Purple]

Aren't those the exact qualifications you need to become Taoiseach?

I certainly hope not!

 

[Zion2022]

Transferable 9k of 20% tax band between married couples has not increased.

Interestingly this one is a very conscious policy decision (supposedly EU wide) to increase female labour participation rates. Started back in 2000. Always irked me that it never increased as a single income household, but wasn’t aware of the deliberate intent.
If anything the direction of travel seems to be to abolish that €9k.

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2025-04-03/21/

 

[TomEdison]

We lose so much to fiscal drag, but nobody seems to know much or care about it outside of pointy headed circles (present company etc etc)

This isn't a bug, it's a feature. With no automatic indexation, when government do index allowances, credits, etc they can claim political credit for doing so, and seek electoral advantage, in a way that wouldn't be possible if indexation was baked into the system and happened automatically. Plus, if the budgetary situation is a bit tight, as is often the case, you can get some marginal improvement by simply not indexing, which has a lower political cost than raising tax rates, or imposing a new tax.

Transferable 9k of 20% tax band between married couples has not increased.

That goes back to the discussion we had about employment rate, and the percentage of the working age population that actually works. Until 2000 the standard rate tax band was fully transferrable between spouses. Charlie McCreevy limited the transferrrable amount to €11k, and reduced it the following year to €9k, with the express intention of incentivising married women to enter the workforce — they now had tax credits that they could only use if they worked themselves, and that would be lost to the family if they did not work. A subsequent ESRI study estimated that the measure increased the labour market participation rate of married women by about 5%.

So, again, indexing this figure would undercut the policy reason for introducing the measure in the first place. In fact McCreevy's original intention was to phase out the transferrable tax credit entirely, over three years, but there was two much political opposition and he had to back down on that. But not indexing it does reduce it in real terms, year by year.

 

[JoeRoberts]

A subsequent ESRI study estimated that the measure increased the labour market participation rate of married women by about 5%.

But not working fulltime hours.

 

[Purple]

But not working fulltime hours.

Women are more than twice as likely as men to work part time (67.1% of people who work part time are women whereas 41.7% of people working fulltime are men).
Interestingly whereas men as a cohort earn around 7% more than women in fulltime employment when it comes to part time employment women earn around the same percentage more than men.

 

[elcato]

This isn't a bug, it's a feature. With no automatic indexation, when government do index allowances, credits, etc they can claim political credit for doing so, and seek electoral advantage, in a way that wouldn't be possible if indexation was baked into the system and happened automatically. Plus, if the budgetary situation is a bit tight, as is often the case, you can get some marginal improvement by simply not indexing, which has a lower political cost than raising tax rates, or imposing a new tax.

Well in the UK they brought in the 'triple lock' to the pension to make sure it kept up with inflation. Just look at the amount of moaning about it now.