Budget 2011 At A Glance

The 2011 Budget passed its first test in the Dáil last night, with the Government having a comfortable majority of 82 votes to 77 on the first vote on the measures introduced. The Budget hit taxpayers hard through a reduction of 10% in the tax credits and bands, a new consolidated social charge of 7 % and the abolition of the PRSI ceiling. This combination of measures will lead to significant tax increases for almost all workers, with more people paying at both the standard and the higher rate. Changes are shown here at a glance:-

Motoring.
Petrol duty up 4c per litre and Diesel duty up 2c per litre and car scrappage scheme to be extended for further six months.
VRT relief for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will continue at up to €2,500 until end of 2012.
Reform of the Ministerial State car system will see the cost of this fleet reduced by a third over the next two years.

Pay.
Taoiseach to take €14,000 pay cut, with Ministers to take €10,000 pay cut and President’s pay to be reduced to a maximum of €250,000.
A cap on public service pay of €250,000 with a maximum of €250,000 salary for judges and a 10pc cut in pay for new judges.
A 4% cut on public service pensions above €12,000 per year.
All Social welfare payments to be cut by 4%.
Those on the new reduced minimum wage not be brought into the tax net and top marginal tax rate to be kept at 52% for all taxpayers.
Income and health levies to be replaced by single universal social charge.

Old Reliables.
No duty rise on cigarettes and beer.

Pensions and Child Benefits.
No reduction in State Pension.
A €10 reduction to child benefit, with an additional €10 reduction for the third child.

Education.
Third-level registration fees will rise to €2,000, but families with more than one child in college will continue to pay the existing fee of €1,500 for the second and subsequent children.

Corporation tax.
No change to our 12.5pc Corporation tax rate.

Residential Property.
TA 1% stamp duty on all residential property transactions up €1m with a 2% stamp duty on all residential property transactions over €1m and property-based tax reliefs to be phased out by 2014.

Travel.
Travel tax reduced from €10 to €3 from March 2011 and only to remain if the airlines do not use it to raise their charges.

Banking.
The DIRT rate on ordinary deposit accounts increased by 2% to 27%, while the DIRT rate on longer-term deposit accounts increased by 2%c to 30%.

Capital Acquisitions.
Base for Capital Acquisitions Tax is being broadened by reducing the tax-free thresholds by 20%.

A middle-income family now stands to lose as much as €300 a month. A couple with three children and a household income of €75,000 who contribute €4,500 to their pension annually will see their net income fall by €1,815, or €151.25 a month.

There can be little doubt that persons on the lowest rung of society in Co Tipperary and countrywide stand to take the greatest pain.

Lisheen Mine Tipperary To Be Extended

Lisheen Mine

At Wednesday’s Joint Committee meeting, North Tipperary Deputy Noel Coonan was informed that the life of Lisheen Mine, Moyne, Thurles, Co Tipperary has been extended possibly to the end of 2014 and Anglo American Lisheen Mining Ltd see the site as having the potential to become a leading renewable energy location into the future.

The local Fine Gael TD who is a member of the Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, yesterday examined the topic of Irish mining and exploration. In attendance at the meeting was Mr John Elmes of Anglo American Ltd, owner of Lisheen Mine.

Deputy Noel Coonan stated:

“Additional mineral deposits have been uncovered at Lisheen mine and extraction will continue post 2014. We are exploring the idea that, on closure of Lisheen Mine, the site could become a forerunner in the field of renewable energy. The site, located between the villages of Moyne and Templetuothy, is ripe with opportunity having it’s own ESB sub-station and connection to the grid. It is ideally located off the M8 and is also in close proximity to the N7 so transport is not an issue. This is a viable opportunity that must be teased out. Mr Elmes and I both agreed that this industrial site already has excellent facilities in place and these should be maximised upon.

Anglo America is actively promoting the site as a centre for the production of wind and hydro energy because of its zoning as an industrial site and the facilities already there. So there’s no reason why the site could not also generate energy from sugar beet and anaerobic digestion and become a thriving industrial renewable energy site,” said Deputy Coonan.

I’m calling on the Government and all departments involved including the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources to do everything in its power to promote Lisheen Mine as a centre of renewable energy, especially in the area of ethanol production.

The sugar beet industry in Thurles should never have closed according to the European Court of Auditors’ report and I believe the industry could be reignited again and I will be pushing for this to happen in my role as Fine Gael’s CAP spokesperson.”

Public Leadership In Winter Hibernation In Tipperary

We the Irish State has spent €40m planning and designing an underground railway line that may never be built, recent figures reveal. Iarnród Éireann admit spending millions of euros on the second Dublin DART underground project, proposed to run from Docklands to Inchicore, even though 7.5 km of the 7.6 km line does not yet have planning permission. New figures show that €20million will have been spent this year alone planning this line.

Killaloe bridge, North Tipperary

One other high-profile rail project for our glorious capital, expected to cost €3 billion, the much hailed Metro North has already incurred costs of €135 million.

If both projects are shelved, because of huge cuts in public spending, it follows that hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ euro’s will have been flushed into the river Liffey. Read the Department of Transport Website here

Meanwhile, back in rural forgotten Tipperary, the much patched road to Two Mile Borris has begun to unravel again and when our present weather conditions subside sufficiently, we can look forward to enjoying a surface similar to a gravelled driveway.

In another scenario, a meeting of County Councillors from Clare and North Tipperary were told by Clare County Council Officials recently that they have earmarked €18,000 for repairs to half the bridge at Killaloe. But there are no plans to carry out similar repairs on the Tipperary half of the bridge, due to lack of funds.

The ten year wait for a ring road for Thurles obviously was not part of the “Lowry Secret Support Deal” for government either and we dare to ask the question here in North Tipp, was there ever any deal in the first place, as certainly we here presently resident in ‘no mans land‘ have not seen any benefits, financially or otherwise, over the past two years.

Now with North Tipperary Fianna Fáil TD Máire Hoctor revealing this week that she was very disillusioned by the performance of Taoiseach Brian Cowen and would be prepared to vote for her fellow Tipperary native, Mary Hanafin to take over as leader of the party, we can expect no ‘manna from heaven‘, or even a bit of tarmac, for that matter, from this quarter either. She, herself, admits that Brian Cowan even forgot she existed, failing to inform her of the visit by the Minister for Trade Enterprise and Innovation Batt O’Keeffe, to Thurles last July, to open a €3.5m business park in the town, thus afforded Mr Lowry the opportunity to pretend he delivered that project for North Tipperary on his own.

Thurles Chamber of Commerce seem to have emigrated and Thurles Urban District Councillors have not been heard from, since August, when dog poo, boy racers and attempts to meet with the IMF were high on their agenda. As for North Tipp County Council, well who knows where they have gone to ground, hopefully not into one of our numerous potholes.

Meanwhile, expect to spend an extra hour queuing in traffic as you attempt to enter Thurles this Christmas period, to collect your children from local schools.

My conclusion is that all our expensive leadership in North Tipperary has hibernated for the Winter and hopefully someone will waken them up prior to the January 2011 General Election.

In the meanwhile, do take care of those vehicle tyres, as you attempt to manoeuvre around the numerous potholes on our rural roads.

The National Recovery Plan How It Effects You

For those of you who would like to read the full 140 page text of the “National Recovery Plan” Please click Here.

13 Main Points of the National Recovery Plan 2011-2014:

€15bn in measures aim to bring deficit under 3% GDP by 2014.
Entry point for income tax to fall to €15,300, from €18,300 currently, by 2014.
Minimum wage to be reduced by €1 to €7.65,with reduction of social welfare spending of €2.8bn now targeted.
Site valuation tax to be introduced of €100, with the introduction of a site value tax in 2012.
Domestic water charges to be introduced by 2014. Up to €550 million from the National Pensions Reserve Fund has been earmarked to be used to undertake the meter installation programme, to allow water charges to be levied from 2014.
Reform of capital acquisitions, capital gains tax
Students’ registration fee to rise from €1,500 to €2,000, up 33%.
Cut in public service staff by 24,750 from end-2008 levels to 2005 levels with 10% pay cut, new pension scheme for new public sector entrants.
Standard VAT rate to rise from 21% to 23% in 2014.
Pension-related tax changes to yield €700mTax savings of €240m on public sector pension deductions
€6bn of adjustments to be front-loaded in 2011.
An extra €1.9bn sought via income tax changes.
Overall pay adjustments of €1.2bn by 2014.

The People Before Profit Alliance have called for a general strike along with a movement of civil disobedience across the country.

Coonan Says An Taoiseach Must Dissolve Government

Speaking today following the Green Party’s announcement that it is pulling its support for Government, Deputy Noel Coonan said an Taoiseach must dissolve this hopeless Government with immediate affect and “let the fate of our country be decided by the people of the country.”

The local Fine Gael TD said: “It is the people of the country who should now decide who formulates the four year fiscal plan and the forthcoming Budget. It is not about Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, the Greens or Independents. It is simply about the people and what is in the best interests of this country. And I believe that a General Election and a mandate from the people is what is needed right now and what is in the best interests of our State.”

Today, the local Fine Gael TD also expressed deep and utter disappointment at this Government who, having brought this country to its knee’s, has now surrendered control of our finances, by a formal request for a multi-billion euro loan.

“This Government has finally admitted it is incapable of lifting our country out of a recessionary hole after weeks of misleading information and denial. An Taoiseach has conceded that Ireland needs financial help from other countries and I’m appalled that the Taoiseach is still refusing to accept responsibility for this disaster. His mandate is no longer credible.
The public has lost confidence in this present Government and its backers. The Government is still refusing to shoulder the blame for this colossal mess and people have no reason to vote for them in the next election,” continued the Fine Gael TD.

This is the first time that such a bail-out has been sought in the State’s 88 year history. Deputy Coonan said that if Fine Gael could turn back the clock, it would have engineered a very different functioning and stable fiscal plan. Fine Gael would have used the period of stability provided by the Bank Guarantee to restructure the banks and impose losses on the banks’ investors.

Right from the start, Fine Gael was the first party to recognise that Anglo Irish Bank could never survive as a commercial entity and needed to be wound down. We were also the first party to argue that it was completely unfair for the Irish people to shoulder all of the losses of our dreadful banks, and that it was only fair that the people who had lent recklessly to the banks should also share in the pain. It’s a basic rule of capitalism that if you lend recklessly to failed institutions you must take the consequences.

Deputy Coonan said this bail-out “must not destroy more jobs and central to that is protecting the 12.5% rate of corporation tax.“ This week Fine Gael will put a Private Members’ Motion to the Dáil seeking cross-party support for the protection of the tax as a vital instrument for future growth and job creation.

Local Fianna Fail Deputy Maire Hoctor was not contactable in Tipperary today, she is believed to be still “grasping at straws” canvassing for her party in the forthcoming Donegal South West by-election.

Minister of State Dr.Martin Mansergh continues to stand by Brian Cowan, giving the Fianna Fail leader his full backing, while the “Deer Hunter” Deputy Mattie McGrath is in no doubt that Brian Cowen should go, if he himself has any hope of re-election. Mattie is keeping in tune with the quote of St.Francis of Assisi : “If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”

Meanwhile, North Tipperary TD Michael Lowry told RTÉ radio this afternoon it was “highly unlikely” that he would support the upcoming budget. Mr Lowry has suddenly realised that the people of Ireland are “demoralised and bewildered” by recent events and that responsibility was now shifting to the opposition to decide the way this country is run.