Dr. Seán Healy:

I thank the joint committee for the invitation and the opportunity to speak to members today and answer questions.

Social Justice Ireland is an independent think-tank and justice advocacy organisation. As the Chairman stated, we have forwarded to the committee our policy briefing on budget choices, which we published in June. In it we advocate reaching the €3.1 billion reduction but by including €500 million of the €1 billion available as a result of the IBRC changes and so on. Taking this out, we are talking about a figure of €2.6 billion. We are doing it completely on the tax side. We propose changes in expenditure that would lead to reductions in expenditure, but we also propose to use that money to increase expenditure in other areas, principally because of the high level of cumulative hits suffered by many people who are on the margins, vulnerable or in the middle. Those on middle and lower incomes have suffered dramatically as a result of the cumulative impact of the hits over the five years.

We promised in June that we would produce a document about investment that would be carried out in an off-the-balance sheet way.

We have now published it along the lines we suggested and it has been supplied to the committee. It is entitled, Investing for Growth, Jobs & Recovery. In it we propose a €7 billion off-the-balance sheet investment package over a three-year period which would generate an increase in economic growth and which, using the Government's own multipliers, could lead to the creation of up to 84,000 jobs. It would provide up to €2.9 billion in additional revenue as a result of this investment. The result would be that a major part of the money could be paid from the gains in terms of increased tax revenue and reduced expenditure because people would be off social welfare and not depending on things like medical cards.

That is the basis on which we have presented. We have been driven very much in that direction by our conviction that there will be no jobs without investment, that there will be no recovery without jobs and that we will be stuck in austerity without recovery. Investment is the critical issue. In that context, we draw attention to the fact that Ireland has very low levels of investment. We can talk about this during questions, but we are standing out with the lowest level of investment in the European Union. Given that starting point, we cannot expect to recover without serious additional investment. We welcome what the Government is doing with investment, but it is not on the scale required to get us out of the mess in which we find ourselves.