Yes, I realise that this is a giveaway budget and that we are all meant to be grateful and happy that the Coalition is splashing the cash about in order to buy our votes, but it says a lot about the mindset of this government that, at a time when they have billions to give away, they wouldn’t increase monthly Child Benefit payments.
As I have written before, very little attention is ever paid to the fact that Child Benefit hasn’t increased in an astonishing 13 years – and in fact actually decreased between 2012 and 2016, because apparently it became cheaper to feed and raise the next generation in that period, or something.
The payments were eventually raised back up to 2011 levels, and they have remained at €140 per month ever since. While incredible, eye-watering, sums of public funds were being wasted on enormous projects (some still not completed), and funding every diversity project under the sun, the cost of raising children was obviously lowest on the government’s lists of priorities.
Clearly it still is. Now, I know that two payments of double Child Benefit before Christmas have been announced today to great fanfare. And the Greens have introduced a “baby bonus” of €420 for newborns (big deal, seriously, it wouldn’t buy Roderic O’Gorman’s ties for the year). It’s better than nothing, but is it fair? I’d argue its not.
A double payment of Child Benefit is an extra €140 – so two double payments are €280 over the whole year. That’s €23 a month or €5.38 a week – after 13 years of waiting for an increase. Forgive me if I’m not prostrating in gratitude at the feet of Jack Chambers.
As I have previously pointed out, it’s not the case that parents are looking for handouts: the child tax credit which was a deduction from taxes that acknowledged the cost of raising children (and providing the country with a future) was abolished and child benefit payment was meant to replace it.
Except it didn’t. As the Parliamentary Budget Office noted, Child Benefit “has not kept pace with either inflation or wage growth”:
“In real terms, this means the 2022 rate of €140 will be €129.47 (2011 base). With 2011 as a base, the rate in 2022 would need to be €151.38 to stay in line with inflation over the period and would need to be €173.58 to stay in line with wage growth. This divergence from price and wage growth is most evident in 2021 and 2022, with the flat rate losing ground compared to the accelerating inflation and wage growth.
So when other payments were being adjusted to reflect “accelerating inflation and wage growth” the government refused to increase child benefit. And the sop thrown in this year’s budget goes nowhere near making up for what families have lost out on.
If families should have received €173.58 to stay in line with inflation and wage growth 2022, but only received €140, every family in receipt of child benefit was left short €402.24 for each child in that year – with at least the same shortfall in 2023.
Two double child benefit payments don’t even come close to matching that shortfall – and, in fact, the additional payments in the Budget don’t even bring the total for this year’s state assistance for raising children to what it should be.
The people doing the most important work on earth are obviously lowest on this government’s list of priorities. A fiver a week is far less than the increase afford to other state benefit beneficiaries, who are obviously all in need of said increases given the cost of living crisis.
But isn’t it extraordinary that at a time when the government has literally more money than it knows what to do with, it still choses not to increase the actual rate of Child Benefit, but instead give once-off payments as if it was benevolently dispensing charity?
It’s a good job most of us aren’t having families for the purpose of providing this ungrateful state with a future, as we’d have given up on the hope of any recognition of that long ago.
But there’s more to it than that. All the Budget 2025 vote-getting exercises pumping money into projects and schools and sport and communities aren’t really worth a damn in the long term if falling birth rates eventually bring economic growth to a grinding halt.
That’s true on a global scale: good luck keeping corporate tax returns up when the birth slump is causing the same havoc everywhere partly because governments were too ideologically addled to give parents the kind of tax credit that sufficiently acknowledged the cost of having and raising a child. Reminder: that tax credit is currently zero, precisely to put parents in the situation where they are expected to be grateful for the measly child benefit we receive.
The latest estimates put the cost in Ireland of raising one child “from birth until completion of their third level education” at a “whopping €250,000”. Don’t expect us to be grateful for a miserly €280.