Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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In its written submission, under the heading "Low total tax-take not sustainable", Social Justice Ireland stated:

An increase in Ireland's overall level of taxation is unavoidable in the years to come; even to maintain current levels of public services and reports, more revenue will be needed to be collected. Consequently, an increase in the tax-take is a question of how, rather than if, and we believe it should be of a scale appropriate to maintain current public service provisions while providing the resources to build a better society.

I will dig into this further.

Are we talking about the actual amount of tax that is collected or the percentage of tax that is collected because while there can be tax cuts, because more people are in employment and wages are increasing, the amount of taxation increases?

Given what we are looking at in the next three years, as part of the confidence and supply arrangement with Fianna Fáil we are likely to see about €3 billion of tax cuts of the €10 billion in fiscal space that would be available over the three years. What is the view of Social Justice Ireland in that regard? We always hear that this is the biggest budget allocation ever to education or health. This is nonsensical and stupid commentary because there are more children in school and people who need health services. Of course, wages are increasing. If we tracked it from 1920, the budgets would have gone up every year other than during the austerity years. Can the delegates reference it? How does that sit with the fact that we are likely to see significant decreases in tax under the current trajectory or strategy of the Government?