There may be less room for tax cuts for workers in the Budget than in recent years, but costs for small businesses will be addressed, the Tánaiste has said.
Speaking at the National Ploughing Championships, Simon Harris also said there will be supports for carers and that the lower tax rate for energy will stay in place.
The Government has committed to a VAT cut for hospitality businesses, a measure costing around €630m annually. However, Mr Harris said this did not necessarily rule out tax cuts for workers, though the funding for such cuts may be smaller.
Mr Harris said about €1.5bn is available for tax measures in the Budget.
"I make no apology, though, for wanting to support small businesses in the hospitality sector. And I think it's a politician who hasn't left the Leinster House bubble, if they don't think that the rural pub serving a bit of food needs a bit of help, if they think that the cost base for the cafes that I sat in in Roscarberry recently is sustainable.
"This is not about hotel rooms, far from it. But this is about an industry that is really important part of our tourism product, that creates hundreds of thousands of jobs and more, even indirectly.
"And we said in the election, as did other parties, that their cost base is too high, and when you say something in election, you should try and follow it through in the budget.
"So this is a measure when you talk about ordinary workers, or any of those sort of phrases. This is for them."
Mr Harris said the VAT cut aims to "help sustain employment in communities, towns and villages." He added that in many towns across Ireland, the most important businesses are hospitality based.
"And we have to try and look at their cost base. Because we promised in the election, we weren't going to get both these one-off measures. Instead, we were going to look at a number of areas where we wanted to see permanent, sustainable reductions - the cost of childcare being one, support for carers, being another, support and cost base for small business being another."
However, Mr Harris acknowledged that competing priorities mean there may not be large tax cuts for workers.
"On the issue of personal tax, I've got to be honest, that does mean, in general, there may not be a lot of space to do a lot of personal tax this year.
"That was similar in the lifetime of the last government, where in the first budget, there wasn't a lot done on personal tax, but those decisions haven't been made."
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