Dr Emma Howard

speaker

282 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 25 Aug

Dr Emma Howard’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 2.

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Today with David McCullagh · The Gathering · 24 Apr 2026 podcast

So, you know, the other issue here is that, and I think like the opposition are pushing for more spending, the package that's already been introduced is a huge level of spending.

And this government have been spending over and above a sustainable amount for a number of years now.

So if you look at the current projections for this year, revised to 7.6% increase in spending, you know, there had been a 5% sustainable spending rule in place

Minister Harris came in and raised that to 6%, but the government are once again breaching that, what they themselves had said would be the sustainable level.

And what happens, and I think it's really important for people to understand, because there is this political pressure.

People do want supports.

They want these universal supports.

Everyone wants a little bit of help.

But when those universal measures are put in place...

And everyone from those lowest income households to the richest households in the country gets those supports.

What it does is it feeds inflation.

So that 6.5% worst case scenario towards the end of the year, that could be another percent or so higher if we have a huge increase in government spending.

Because again, in all of the projections, we're actually in the lucky situation and unique really, or one of the unique ones across Europe is,

that we're still predicting economic growth this year.

So we don't need this level of universal supports.

What we need is targeted temporary measures.

And although the government seems to be saying that on the surface and using this message, their actions are not.

So things like those excise cuts are not targeted.

They go to everybody.

But when we look at income tax in Ireland, though, that squeeze middle, that average worker in Ireland actually pays less tax on average than OECD countries.

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