Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for attending today's meeting. I am somewhat surprised at the attendance at today's meeting of the ICMSA. It should perhaps have attended yesterday's meeting on business matters. However, I have a general question which I will put to all the organisations and will then deal with some specific issues.

All the witnesses will be aware that the OECD produced its report on Ireland today in which it urges the Government to persevere with the conditions and targets of the EU-IMF programme and to reduce the budget deficit to below 3% of GDP by 2015. It is suggested by the OECD that if we proceed with the programme, we will be in a position to ease back in next year's budget, with the caveat that growth lives up to expectations, and so on. What are the organisations' views? We appear to be faced with stark choices. Many of the submissions which this committee has received are focused on two particular aspects, including the need for an easing up on austerity and for investment in terms of improving domestic demand. Other submissions, in particular from the Small Firms Association, call on the Government not to increase taxes for businesses in order to assist them in creating jobs and so on. I would welcome if each of the organisations would comment on these two diverging perspectives which are being put to the committee.

On the presentation by the Disability Federation of Ireland, it is hard to disagree that recent years have been very tough on the disability sector. There is no doubt about that. Might some of the more general reforms proposed be of assistance, including, for example, the introduction of universal means testing for all benefits rather than means testing of people on each occasion they apply for a benefit? I agree with the suggestion made by my colleague. I cannot help feeling that an awful lot of current cuts are cuts by stealth.

It reminds me of years ago when I worked in a law firm and I was trying to get a visa for somebody who was opening a very prestigious pharmaceutical plant in Ireland. In those days the aliens department opened for an hour a day for phone calls, and that was it. It was never open at any other time. I have also noticed in my experience of dealing with the Department of Social Protection that we have reached the point where more frequently there is nobody at the end of the phone. One is communicating with a post office box or an answering machine. It is a well known fact that when one is dealing with difficult individual circumstances one must deal with an individual who has discretion on those issues. To what extent should we be seeking in the basic features of the social welfare system, whether it relates to disability or any other payment, that there should be some form of general statement about the rights people should have when they are interfacing with those systems? Do the witnesses wish to comment on that?

With regard to the ICMSA submission, I have no expertise in agriculture apart from the fact that my father was a farmer and I have worked on buying and selling land over the years as a solicitor. However, it appears to be a wish list on the taxation front. I can understand the position put forward by other organisations that appeared before the committee such as the Small Firms Association, IBEC and so forth who argued there should be different tax treatment on, for example, capital gains that are made from business investments where it is a business as opposed to non-productive gain, in other words, if I just dabbled in the stock market and I was lucky enough to have made a serious amount of money. I cannot understand why the ICMSA is opposed to any further increase in the capital gains tax rate. Does it mean purely on farm gains or just generally? Similarly, why should there be no further reductions in the CAT tax free thresholds for gifts and inheritances? Irish society has been very unfair in that somebody who works an extra day in a supermarket will pay the marginal rate of tax on every cent of income, whereas somebody who engages in non-productive earning, for example by buying and selling stocks and shares, pays a significantly lower rate. I could not possibly accept that unless a really good argument was made in terms of it being a business expense.

Agricultural land is a valuable asset and farming is a business. Presumably, the ICMSA is arguing to the committee that it should be treated as a business, in the way that any other business is treated. There is no reason to support agriculture purely for the sake of hobby farmers, or however one wishes to describe them. I believe a sufficient amount of damage has been done to the farming community over the years by paying people basically to be non-productive. On the property tax issue, there is no reason that one cannot pay it by direct debit throughout the year like everybody else.

On the proposals in FLAC's submission, I agree that we must value-proof any changes we make from both a human rights and an equality perspective. Would FLAC support the inclusion of economic, social and cultural rights in the Constitution in order to protect those rights? What is FLAC's view on re-instigating the Combat Poverty Agency, for example, as an organisation that is independent in that context?

Finally, FLAC has been very vocal on the issue of people in mortgage arrears, and I am personally very much involved in that area. One of the biggest problems people face is that they have no access to an expert independent service when they find themselves faced with banks on the other side of the table. The Money Advice & Budgeting Service, MABS, is totally over-stretched and in many areas of the country it does not have that expertise. What is FLAC's view on that issue?