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

-----and there are still absolutely vast amounts of money left beyond that. That is what we propose to increase. We are not talking about hitting the family home.

We are talking about hitting the additional wealth people have beyond that. I am not quite sure what Deputy Nash is saying, but I am a bit surprised by it. Let us put it this way; the contribution of workers through tax and USC went through the roof, relatively speaking, after 2007. If I remember correctly, workers were paying approximately €13 billion in tax, pre-crash. It is now up to €27 billion. The big jump happened as a result of the USC, which has never been rolled back. We have, in effect, turned an emergency tax into a permanent tax. Every worker in this country will tell one how angry he or she is to see the little brackets around USC printed on their pay packet and the big lump of money taken out by it. I do not believe there is ever justification for the USC but, to my mind, there is no justification now given the fact we are out of the emergency used to justify it and workers are, proportionately speaking, making a much larger tax contribution than corporations or people at the very top who are so wealthy they can make money just from having money. That money continues to grow.

The Minister is correct in his point about our high income social charge only replacing some of the universal social charge but, as I said in my introduction, the proposal we are making intersects with a number of other proposals we will come to in other amendments that will make up the difference. We are proposing, for example, new bands of income tax for those earning more than €100,000, €150,000, €200,000 and €250,000, which would raise approximately €3.8 billion. We would not only get the money the abolition of the universal social charge would lose us, but more when it is combined with the higher income social charge. It would probably get to the sort of figures the Minister mentioned when he asked what could be done to make it cost neutral. The sort of thing one would have to do is significantly increase the income tax contribution of those earning in excess of €100,000, €150,000 and so on.

By the way, it is again worth saying, and this is a point the Labour Party and others on the left should appreciate, that 20 or 30 years ago it was commonplace to have that level of taxation on higher incomes in the top couple of deciles. There were Labour Party leaders who talked about things such as taxing the rich until the pips squeaked. That was commonplace on the left, but it seems we have rowed back from it. The left should not row back from that, as is clear when one looks at people like Thomas Piketty who has studied these things. I know the Minister, fair play to him, has read Piketty so he knows how the accumulation and concentration of incomes and wealth have occurred since the onset of neoliberal economic orthodoxies. To my mind, it is just old-fashioned left-wing politics but it is justified now more than even when one sees the high concentrations of wealth, income and profits at the top compared with the burden working people are suffering from.

When one thinks about our inability to retain and recruit workers across a number of key areas, whether it is in the health service, construction, education and all sorts of sectors, and talks to young people, they will say they are leaving in droves, and are considering leaving, because it is not worth their while living here. Their after-tax income just cannot allow them to live a decent life here whereas, if they go to Australia, Canada or elsewhere, they can. The income they will get in those countries will allow them to live a decent-quality life. We have to address that. Perhaps Deputy Nash, the Minister or others do not agree with my particular prescription but we need to start to look at this. That is the point about these amendments. We need to start to take seriously what is a legitimate and valid argument about wealth redistribution. I do not think we do that. We tend to operate on a budget-to-budget basis, tweaking this and reacting to this, that and the other thing, but we are not looking at a more strategic debate about how we redistribute wealth and income on a basis that will allow us to have a sustainable and equitable economy in the future. I will not delay the meeting any further.