Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I hear Dr. Doorley's point on the discretionary options and there is legislation now being published to assist households with energy costs to a value of €100 before VAT. If you wanted to keep pace with inflation, and looking again at social welfare recipients, there would need to be an extra, say, €6 on average increase in social welfare rates. In the absence of that, those families are going to be €300 poorer this year than last. Even if we offset that with the energy measure that is being brought in it still leaves them €200 poorer than they were last year. How important is it for those type of measures to be targeted in terms of inflation? That takes me to another question on taxation.

If we index the taxation measures every year, either by price or by wage inflation, we are keeping the system as it is. Therefore, one is deciding to have the tax take as a percent of GDP, compared with our European neighbours. One is deciding to have a low tax economy and, therefore, starving public services of resources. Is indexation always the best thing to do? While indexation can lift people who need a lift, it also benefits seriously wealthy individuals because they get the benefit from the same indexation, particularly when we look at the tax package of €500 million in last year's budget. I think more than €340,000 of it was aimed at the higher rate of tax and dealing with that band. Yet, 80% of earners are excluded from that benefit. Therefore, should indexation be broad-based, or should it be targeted? What is the experience in other areas? I apologise because I know that there was a lot there, so I will stop now.