Mr. Paul Ginnell:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to meet it on a Friday. The Community Platform is a network of approximately 30 national organisations, including the INOU and the National Women's Council of Ireland. I work for the European Anti Poverty Network, EAPN. The Community Platform's submission highlights the fact that the direction taken by decisions in recent years has led to an increase in poverty, inequality and exclusion. The crisis has increased levels of unemployment, but the decisions made have also played a role.

Our submission covers three areas. First, reform of public services. People living in poor and disadvantaged communities and groups are more dependent on public services. In recent years, there have been sizable cuts to many such services. Some of these will not only have short-term social and economic costs, but also long-term ones. In terms of care of elderly homeless persons, for example, there have been cuts to home care supports. As such, people are more dependent on hospital care, which is more costly. The cuts do not make sense from an economic point of view, let alone a social one. It should be considered whether reforms to public services increase access to quality services for those who need them and whether they contribute to the creation of a more equitable and inclusive society.

Much of our submission relates to tax reforms. The Community Platform produced a document on this matter last year, entitled "Paying our Way", which members may have seen. It examined an overall comprehensive approach to reforming the tax system to make it more progressive and equality-based.

Also, the emphasis of the Government programme has been on cuts over tax increases which we believe results in more inequitable outcomes and more negative social and economic outcomes. We have a number of proposals relating to that.

As regards the broader focus, the document is a ten year programme which examines how to increase Ireland's tax take overall to closer to the EU average. Having a broader tax base and a higher tax take will facilitate the development of improved services and a social protection system closer to what exists in other EU countries. Currently, Ireland has a 10% lower tax take than the EU average, which is quite considerable. We have a number of proposals in that regard which we can discuss further.

Finally, our last proposal relates to the issue of impact assessment of budgets. It should include a poverty impact assessment and an equality and gender impact assessment. The impact so far of budgets in the last number of years has been to increase poverty and inequality. It is essential that the impact of the proposals made by the Government in the budget is assessed in advance so we know what the outcomes will be. The current system of poverty impact assessment is carried out on a very narrow basis. The overall budget is not assessed for its impact. Specific issues are assessed, such as an increase in income tax, and some of the levies in the past were assessed for their impact. However, that is a very general approach and does not appear to have any bearing on some of the decisions that are made. In terms of the overall approach, we consider it essential that a poverty, gender and equality impact assessment be carried out in advance of budgets, including this budget.