Sinn Féin has said that Budget 2022, like the Government, "is out of touch, out of ideas and out of time", while Labour said it was "anaemic and directionless".

Sinn Féin's Pearse Doherty told the Dáil that the Budget had: "No answers, no urgency and no leadership."

It should have responded to the major crises, including in housing, where €1,800 a month is the average rent, he said.

He said it should have responded to the crisis facing patients and staff in the health service with 900,000 people on waiting lists.

He paid tribute to healthcare workers and public service workers for helping the country through the pandemic.

"The State can deliver" when needed, he said, and this is a message to "the cynics".

"We face great changes on the international tax landscape", he said, and this demands investment in housing, childcare and infrastructure to keep us competitive.

"People voted in 2018 for change", he said, and change is delivered through budgets.

Citing the cost of living is rising, especially in energy costs, he said the Government increasing "energy prices further" through carbon taxed is "a con job", and will not deliver to strapped homeowners.

Home heating oil increased by 40% in the last year, and the Government has added €40 to this cost, he said, saying that Sinn Féin would not implement such an increase.

"You are taking with one hand and giving with the other", he said.

He told the Dáil that 300,000 renters "have seen their rents go up every single year" and said they should have got relief.

"Do you not understand the pressure, the anxiety" people face, he asked.

The housing budget is "hugely disappointing", lacks ambition, and is a quarter of the investment that is needed, he said.

The Government's measures on mica are "an insult", he added.

He said: "Families are being fleeced by the cost of childcare", which is the most expensive in Europe.

It "a direct result of Government policy", which has "crippled" many families, and prevents others from starting a family.

He welcomed relaxing the means testing for the Carer's Allowance, but said it should be introduced now - rather than waiting until June - and should be made more easily and widely available.

The Labour Party's Finance Spokesperson has told the Dáil that the Budget is "anemic and directionless", and engages only in "tinkering around the edges".

Ged Nash said people should "never forget" that 5,000 lives have been lost in the pandemic and accepted that it would be "churlish" to fail to acknowledge the impact that State support has had during the crisis.

But, he said, as the country emerges from Covid, the Budget "was a chance to deliver a new deal for a fairer Ireland", adding that "it does nothing of the sort".

He accused the Government of being "blinded by ideology" and ignoring warnings on borrowing.

Labour will oppose the Budget, Deputy Nash told the House, because it "utterly fails" on all fronts, particularly to protect "the least well-off".

He said Ministers Paschal Donohoe and Michael McGrath are the "Ant and Dec" of Irish politics, always appearing side by side, and increasingly hard to tell apart.

Deputy Nash also said a Carbon Tax credit for harder off families would have shown the Government "was on their side", and he dismissed the working from home credit a gift to larger companies, where most remote workers are employed.

Social Democrats co-leader Róisín Shortall told the Dáil that it is "regrettable...disrespectful", and "disgraceful", that there wasn't "a single cabinet member here for this debate".

Deputy Shortall said that the budget "is full of smoke and mirrors", "sham" and "spin", and that it lacks any "ambition" or "bold ideas".

The Government "doesn't grasp the scale of the challenge", she said, adding, "This Government just doesn't get it".

The budget's "regressive tax cuts" mean lower earners "will get a fraction of their better off counterparts", Deputy Shortall said.

The Government's "abject failure" has seen the housing crisis get "immeasurably worse", and it is "disgusting" how this is inflicting "misery" on people, she said.

People Before Profit TD and spokesperson on Finance and Housing, Richard Boyd Barrett, described it as a "shockingly inadequate" Budget "of crumbs" that will do "nothing for people facing extortionate rents, energy charges and the cost of living in this country".

He said that the required vision to end the housing crisis, develop and national health service and deal with the climate and biodiversity emergency was seriously lacking.

His party colleague, Paul Murphy, said the Budget had returned to the "capitalist normal of reliance on the market, which means a further deepening of the housing crisis".

Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín said the Government "still does not understand the magnitude and urgency of the crisis engulfing half the population of Ireland".

He added: "Total extra Government investment to deal with the one million people on hospital waiting lists is €250 million. That works out at €250 for each person waiting.

"The average cost of a bed in a public hospital is estimated at €889 a day. Is this the action of a Government that appreciates the urgency of the health crisis?" he asked.

Mr Tóibín also said the Budget "made little or no provision for the Mica crisis".