Alternative Budget 2026

Budget 2026 must strike a balance between protecting our economic security, dealing with the long-term challenges we face as a society, and providing targeted support to hard-pressed households.

Ireland is now the second most expensive country in the European Union, with the price of goods and services 38 per cent above the EU average in 2024. This high cost of living has many causes, but is in part due to decades of under-investment in the kinds of public services that are free, or almost free, in other Western European countries.

If the government is serious about reducing the cost of living and supporting working people and families, it should use the majority of available resources to invest in better quality public services and social infrastructure. It must tackle the high cost of those services and reduce the cost of living in areas like housing, healthcare, childcare and education.

The Social Democrats’ priorities in Budget 2026 include:

• Lifting up to 40,000 children out of poverty with a new second tier of Child Benefit.
• Increasing State-led supply of affordable homes, and investing €120 million in a modular homes factory to turbocharge delivery.
• Abolishing the means test for Carer’s Allowance – something the government must do in Budget 2026 if it wants to match its rhetoric about valuing care with action.
• Investing to bring down the cost of education at all levels. This includes maintaining the €1,000 reduction in the student contribution fee at third level.
• Cutting childcare fees by more than €200 per month.
• Introducing a weekly cost of disability payment of €20.
• Energy credits worth €400, targeted at households in the lowest 40 per cent of incomes.
• Increasing pension and working age welfare payments by €15.
• Investing in Ireland’s clean energy future, via the creation of a Wind Energy Fund.
• Increasing total paid leave for parents to cover the first 12 months of a child’s life.
• A €100 Sports and Activity voucher for all children aged 6 to 18, to ensure that no child misses out on club membership due to unaffordability, funded by an increase in the betting levy.