Full coverage: Budget

Competing spending priorities and the repayment of debt contracted after Covid leave gaps to be filled under the Irish presidency of the EU. Jonathan Keane reports from Brussels and Thomas Hubert from Mullingar.

This is a case of the State using the country’s balance sheet to insulate domestic businesses from international shocks — using international money. This model, as we know, is unsustainable.

In 2021, the OECD called for a budget overhaul at the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council as funding shortfalls force the watchdog to scale back activities. A new bill is in train to act on the recommendation.

The committee will call on the City of Dublin ETB, which operates the student grant system, to explain a €4m overspend on the as-yet-completed project. The Currency reported the project's ongoing issues including removal of the original contractor in 2021.

The chancellor’s budget manages to create £22bn (€25.1bn) in desperately needed fiscal headroom as tax rises look to reduce the public finances' reliance on debt in the long term. But the question of growth still looms large.

If a balance in policy between pro-enterprise and pro-redistribution is to be maintained, those who believe in that balance, and the pro-enterprise part of it in particular, will need to up their game in the years ahead.  

While Budget 2026 doesn’t fund the actions needed to meet 2030 targets, it gives companies opportunities to benefit from the green transition.

Budget legislation introduces a series of measures to facilitate multinationals as they refine their Irish corporate structures, as well as investors using limited partnerships for Irish acquisitions.

Now in his 16th budget debate as Sinn Féin’s finance spokesperson, Pearse Doherty outlines ideological differences with the Government on housing, the taxation of large and small businesses, and income redistribution in a cost-of-living crisis.

Behind the barricades of Leinster House lies a broader story: of a country thriving economically yet grappling with the quiet anxieties that shape politics and public life.