Editorial: A budget that disappointed almost everyone

This year it’s a very different budget to last year’s budget - but that was a pre-election budget. Of course, you could argue that Tuesday’s 2026 budget was also a pre-election budget!

A budget doesn’t move the dial on a presidential election of course, and this one certainly didn’t.

This won’t be a popular budget. Ordinary people are not seeing much benefits at all. It’s a flat and underwhelming budget compared to recent budgets but they were giveaway budgets. Perhaps we have gotten too used to them?

One-off measures like energy credits had begun to become an annual event - the opposite to one-off measure. So Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe and Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Services, Reform and Digitalisation Jack Chambers are trying to reduce inflation and get things back under control.

However for homeowners, the timing is bad as a number of the electricity providers will increase their rates this month. Energy Efficiency Ireland criticised the Budget, pointing out that since 2021 the cost of electricity has jumped 69%.

“This doesn’t even include the price hikes announced by some providers which will come into effect this month,” said Briain Kelly of EnergyEfficiency.ie.

The last two governments have given nine rounds of energy credits since April 2022, with a total value of €1,500 per household. There are few giveaways in Budget 2026. The strange thing is a €9.4 billion budget feels akin to an austerity budget. The focus has been on infrastructure, water and transport with a huge rise on spending on the National Development Plan. The mood was flat in the Dáil on Tuesday with little reaction, even from the opposition benches. After outsourcing underage football coaching to the UK for many years, it’s great to see a bigger, albeit still modest investment in coaching in Ireland. League of Ireland academies are to receive €3m in funding from the Government. The funding is short of the €4.45m requested by the FAI. This may be enough for each club to operate 26 underage academies for men and women and hire 2 full-time staff each. This still leaves us far below many comparable countries but it’s a start.

Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers said the funding represented the start of a multi-year commitment to fund grassroots football. “This presents us with a responsibility – but also an enormous opportunity – to nurture our brightest young talents here at home and provide them with the best environment to fulfil their potential,” he said.

It’s a fiscally conservative budget that had a huge focus on trying to improve housing - especially by getting necessary infrastructure in place. It remains to be seen if this approach will be effective. For Cork, the budget will also support continuation of Phase 1 of the Cork Area Commuter Rail Programme, involving double tracking from Glounthaune to Midleton and re-signalling of the track, along with other works. The M28 Cork to Ringaskiddy will continue to get funding too.

These projects had already secured their funding though, hadn’t they? It doesn’t seem like there was much that was new for Cork in Budget 2026.

An Taoiseach Micheál Martin has had better weeks!