Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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The Government often likes to make much of the fact that Ireland has a progressive income tax system. I think the argument is that it is one of the most progressive income tax systems in Europe. Obviously, that misses something, which is that the Government is shifting away from income - direct - taxation towards indirect taxation, which is inherently far more regressive. Considering the overall percentage of income spent on taxation by different deciles of income we can see it is not a very progressive system at all with the bottom 10% paying almost as much as the top 10% as a total percentage of their income.

My second point is that if the Government claims to have a progressive income tax system, it is contradicting that in the moves it is making in this budget whereby while the extremely low-income earners are getting relatively speaking a percentage gain, it is from a very small base, but the big numbers of income earners on €20,000, €25,000 or €30,000 get very little from the budget and the big benefits go to those earning €55,000, €75,000, €100,000 and upwards. That is also the case with percentage change of net income.