Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Can he tell us anything about the distribution of that income? Average income can mean very little when we are talking about people at the top doing very well but people at the bottom not doing so well. What does it really tell us and can Mr. McCarthy tell us any more? My reading of the economic growth, and I suspect the feeling of many people, is that the benefit of economic growth is going largely to the better paid and better off. Indeed, according to a paper I am reading, the share of gross income of the top 10% of earners increased from 34% to 39% over the last five years and, over the same period, roughly half the increase in total income, which was €21 billion, also went to that cohort. Other figures suggest the bottom 50% received a tiny proportion of the growth in GDP. Has Mr. McCarthy anything to say on this? Are there tables, figures and statistics on the distribution of wage growth, income growth and GDP growth?