Sinn Féin has warned that Budget 2024 will do nothing to address the crises in housing and healthcare – labelling it, ‘a budget for landlords’.

The Government this afternoon tabled a budget worth a total of €14bn.

The package includes tax breaks for workers, cuts to childcare fees and new system of energy credits for households.

The package includes expenditure measures of €5.3 billion, €1.1 billion worth of tax measures and a €6.4 billion core package.

You can find all the key measures here.

Finance Minister Michael McGrath Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe. Image: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews

Speaking at Leinster House after the announcement this afternoon, Sinn Féin finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty said the Government had failed to deliver a budget that can address the housing crisis.

“The number one issue facing workers and families is the housing crisis,” he said.

“It permeates every facet of Irish life. Young people left without hope, children growing up in emergency accommodation, businesses who can't get workers, schools who can't get teachers.

“Guards, nurses, members of our Defence Forces leaving their profession because they can't find somewhere to live.

“This should have been a budget to resolve the housing crisis, but today Minister McGrath and Minister Donohoe have failed in that regard.

“Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have caused the housing crisis and today's budget is further confirmation that they are not the ones to fix it.

“We needed a budget for renters, instead, we got a budget for landlords.”

Paschal Donohoe and Michael McGrath

He claimed Sinn Féin could have introduced a budget that “would have got to grips with the housing crisis and build the homes that our people so desperately need”.

Deputy Doherty also took aim at the Government’s health record – noting that “access to healthcare, is one of the most fundamental needs of any citizen”.

He said that, instead of living in a country where parents can have confidence their children will be able to access care, “we have an Ireland where young and old are waiting hours upon hours to be admitted to our hospitals and emergency department”.

“Any modern society will be judged on its ability to deliver on these very most basic needs,” he said.

“Has there ever been a point in the history of the State when a minister celebrates billions of additional euros in the State’s coffers when so many children are condemned to homelessness or forced to wait for years for critical surgery?

“The question I ask is, is that the society we want to build? Because today's Budget offers no more hope to these children than they had yesterday.

“It has failed them again.”