Longford /Westmeath Minister slates Sinn Féin's alternative budget

Sinn Féin's alternative budget published recently has been strongly criticised by Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment Peter Burke who said there is nothing in it for Irish business.

The Longford-Westmeath TD stressed the alternative budget being proposed by Sinn Féin is yesterday’s solutions to yesterday’s problems and is not materially different to alternative budgets published by the party in the past.

“It is clear that the opposition have learnt nothing about the enterprise needs of the country despite having chaired the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment during the term of this Dáil,” he said. “What is particularly of concern is how the Sinn Féin proposals either completely overlook or are indifferent to the issues and challenges now being faced by Irish business, namely rising input costs and especially energy costs along with the challenges of recruiting and retaining staff."

Minister Burke said the Sinn Féin alternative budget would firstly penalise business expansion with a higher stamp duty rate for commercial property and secondly dilute investment returns through higher withholding taxes and capital gains tax.

The Fine Gael representative stressed this would make the market for skilled labour even more difficult by levying more income taxes on higher earners.

“Nor is there adequate provision in the Sinn Féin proposals to deal with the broader power generation and water supply issues which face the country," he said. "The proposed infrastructure fund of €50million in the first year is totally inadequate and reflects the lack of understanding of the scale of the transformation needed,” Minister Burke added.

He also pointed out that he is also working with government colleagues on ways to provide the multi-billion euro investment in the national grid.