{"id":416427,"date":"2026-04-25T05:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T05:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/416427\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T05:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T05:39:12","slug":"fuel-protests-did-not-prompt-decision-on-income-tax-cuts-tanaiste-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/416427\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuel protests did not prompt decision on income tax cuts, T\u00e1naiste says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The decision to make changes to income tax in the upcoming budget was not prompted by fuel protests, Simon Harris said.<\/p>\n<p>The T\u00e1naiste said he made the commitment days after becoming finance minister in November, and is part of the Programme for Government.<\/p>\n<p>He was speaking after Public Expenditure Minister Jack Chambers said on Tuesday that Budget 2026 \u201cdidn\u2019t give workers a break\u201d and that would \u201chave to be a priority in the context of Budget 2027\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Chambers said helping low to middle-income workers was a priority for the upcoming budget on October 6th.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in Co Kildare on Friday, Harris said the fuel protests had not prompted the decision.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, I said it before Christmas, I said it within days of becoming a Minister for Finance that there needs to be a personal income tax package budget,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s particularly surprising to many people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we came together and formed the Programme for Government, we did make it clear we wanted to make progress on personal income tax over the lifetime of the government.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had to make a series of decisions this year to support housing and to support business, small businesses in the hospitality sector.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat did, I suppose, reduce the room for a personal income tax package in this current budget, but it is our collective intention to proceed with income tax measures in the forthcoming budget.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe composition of that is too early, we need to work our way through that to decide what is the best way.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"not-prose no-underline\" data-action=\"click\" data-category=\"Read more article clicked\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.breakingnews.ie\/ireland\/fall-in-social-housing-acquisitions-and-record-high-homelessness-1891252.html\" data-value=\"1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.breakingnews.ie\/ireland\/fall-in-social-housing-acquisitions-and-record-high-homelessness-1891252.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>        <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2-84099599-1.jpg\" class=\"rounded-sm object-contain bg-transparent z-10 w-full h-full not-prose\" alt=\"Fall In Social Housing Acquisitions And Record High Homelessness\" width=\"278\" height=\"156\" \/><\/p>\n<p>        Ireland<\/p>\n<p>Fall in social housing acquisitions and record high homelessness<\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I actually think the compelling case for an income tax package is even strengthened now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a cost-of-living crisis, one of the best things you can do is help people keep some of their own money and work always has to pay. So it is our intention to do that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe next staging post will be the summer economic statement, where we generally provide a breakdown on the amount that we intend in the budget to be for new spending measures and the amount we intend in the budget to be for taxation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The decision to make changes to income tax in the upcoming budget was not prompted by fuel protests,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-416427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}