Louth Green Party label budget as anti environment and anti jobs.

At its December constituency group meeting held just before Christmas in Dundalk, members of the Louth Green Party described the budget measures introduced earlier in the month as damaging to job prosects and damaging to the environment too.

On the increases in motor tax Cllr Ollan Herr noted that the tax on low emission vehicles was going up by 58% while the increase on the most polluting cars is up by only 7%. " This is an anti environment measure from Minister Hogan and a betrayal of people who tried to do the right thing by downsizing their cars. Minister Gormley was criticised at the time for linking road tax to pollution but the new pricing has had a very positive effect and saved people money. Minister Hogan appears hell bent on undoing that good work especially when you see his petty attempt to cease funding for Dublin City Council to employ a cycling officer. In contrast, the meeting commended Cllr Herr and Dundalk Town Council on the ongoing work to make Dundalk a safe place to cycle with the new cycle network now being built. 

On the 2% VAT increase , Mark Dearey claimed it could have , "a very negative impact on spending locally in 2012 and will prove disasterous if the UK decide on a sterling devaluation, a measure that cannot be ruled out if sterling continues to strengthen against the Euro and UK exports struggle."

" If the reductionn to 9% for tourism related goods and services created jobs as the Government claim, how can they say that this increase at the upper end won't cost jobs? This is a measure that should have been introduced on a phased basis but because the two parties in Government made absolute commitments on income tax and welfare payments they ended up introducing a measure that most definitely will cost jobs in the retail sector. A far wiser thing would have been to integrate a welfare payment such as children's allowance into the tax code so that it is treated as income taxed accordingly something the Green Party in government argued strongly for."