Full coverage: Budget

People wanted short-term measures to assist with rising costs in the knowledge that the tax receipts that support them could well evaporate. And that contradiction underpinned Budget 2024.

In a perfect illustration of coalition politics, Budget 2024 allocates some windfall corporation tax to future current spending, some to the stability of capital expenditure, some to green policies - and most to an immediate giveaway.

As corporation tax receipts fall below forecasts, the largest payments yet to come this year will determine the new trend after years of runaway growth.

Prolonged high inflation is "incredibly socially divisive and economically very injurious," says Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe ahead of the budget. This theme threads through all others discussed in his interview with The Currency last week.

The chance to be transformative for the nation is rare for any individual or group. Ministers for finance get a go at it every year. This may be the last budget that can be ambitious in structural terms for some time to come and it is too good a chance to waste.  

We need to move beyond the short-term obsession and the archaic constraints of our traditional budgetary approach. We need to make and win the case in Brussels for splitting the capital budget from the current budget, and to fund the former separately.

There is little evidence to suggest that the corporation tax bounty will dry up. But with the budget approaching, it is politically useful for the budgetary ministers to voice their concerns and show their caution.

After Budget 2024, multinationals will no longer have access to a 12.5% rate in Ireland. There is still a lot more they can do to locate profits here at a tax advantage, however, and the unofficial expectation for the Exchequer is: more money.

Danny McCoy, the chief executive of Ibec, argues that the state has a bounty of resources, but a lack of capacity to deploy them. He outlines solutions on how we can bridge the capacity gap and gives his views on housing, education, and what constitutes wealth.

At a conference in The Central Bank, policymakers came together to discuss the best way to design Ireland's proposed sovereign wealth fund.