Ending rip-off and supporting workers and families must be top priority in budget – Clarke

Sinn Féin TD for Longford Westmeath, Sorca Clarke, has said the driving aim of Sinn Féin’s Alternative Budget for 2026 is to make life more affordable for people, to ease the pressure on households hammered by soaring prices, and to invest with ambition for a better future.

She said it is time to put workers, families and communities first.

Teachta Clarke said: ““This budget comes at a time when the cost of living is sky high. It also comes when the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael waste of public money is out of control. Households for whom every euro counts watch on as the government pours their hard-earned money down the drain.

“The examples of waste raised by Mary Lou McDonald in the Dáil last week alone would have paid for SNAs for nearly 100 schools – there is a real life price to be paid for this waste and it’s paid by ordinary people.”

She said workers and families deserve better.

“Our driving aim is to make life more affordable for people, to ease the pressure on households hammered by soaring prices, and to invest with ambition for a better future.

“We are proposing a €2.5bn cost-of-living package to help people through the winter, to help households to get by. We are combining targeted payments for those most in need with one-off measures to make sure help reaches everybody struggling to make ends meet.

“When people ask why it is that in a state so wealthy, nothing seems to work, the answer is found in the bad priorities and bad choices made by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael over the last decade and a half.

“They always prioritise those at the top. They refuse to take on the energy companies, insurance companies and big supermarkets as they rip people off.”

Sinn Féin key measures:

• €450 of energy credits

• Putting a month’s rent back into your pocket and banning rent increases for three years

• €10 a day childcare

• Scrapping the USC on the first €40,000 of your income for every worker

• Fully abolishing student fees from September 2026 - starting with €1500 for the 2025 academic year

• A double child benefit payment

• Increase pensions and core welfare payments by €15 and €20 for disability

• Reintroduce the State Pension at 65

• Abolish the TV license

• Scrap carbon tax increases on petrol, diesel, home heating oil and gas

• Deliver 22,900 social and affordable homes

• 500 additional hospitals bed in 2026

• Commence the largest Garda recruitment drive in the history of the state – 1,000 new trainees