Dr. Seán Healy:

My answer to it is "No". We should not have the same measure across the economy. The reason for that is one we have spelt out in some detail. Our position is Ireland is not collecting sufficient tax to deliver the services and infrastructure required, that is, services and infrastructure at what we would say is a western European average level. It is basically what people would expect from looking at our peer countries in western Europe.

We need to move the overall tax take up. We are not talking about a huge increase but a moderate one. We have spelt it out and provided a basis for it. I am not going to go into the detail here because it is very extensive but we have published it. A few days ago we submitted an updated version of it to the Commission on Taxation and Welfare that is sitting. I think the closing date for submissions was last week or earlier this week. Anyway, we made a submission before the deadline setting out our views on this. We are talking about raising the overall total tax by a relatively small amount. This would bring it up closer to the European average but not actually reach it. That would give us quite substantial amounts of money to make up for the deficits currently there in both services and infrastructure. Most Irish people want services like health, education and so on and infrastructure like public transport, broadband and social housing to be at a western European level and that we match our peers. To do that we must get closer to their level of tax take.

We need to deal with the illusion that is sometimes created that we can have European levels of services and infrastructure for American levels of taxation. We cannot. It is not doable. This is one of the things we believe there should be a national discussion and debate about. We have been urging the Government to have these discussions and use the social partnership process or the national economic dialogue or some process to bring together the various sectors of society to have a discussion about what level of service we want delivered in Ireland and what levels of infrastructure we want and then having a serious discussion based on evidence about how we are going to pay for those. At least some of that is going to have to come out of the public purse, if you like. That means we have to see some increase in the overall tax take, the way we see it.

To achieve that, we feel there is a need now for a new social contract. Most Deputies have probably heard us going on about this already in other arenas and so on. We believe we should be working simultaneously for a thriving economy, decent services and infrastructure, just taxation, good governance and sustainability. The just taxation piece is critical in that. There are five basic things and just taxation is critical if we are to do it. Therefore, I would not have the same approach to it as I would have to benchmarking and indexation of welfare. Once we get the total tax take up to the levels that can provide the services and infrastructure we require or that we want as a nation, then we can have a discussion about how to benchmark it and how we keep a balance between our infrastructure and services, on the one side, and the tax take on the other.

The point we constantly make is if one wants a thriving economy, which I think we all do, then we must put in the services. We must have a good health system and a good education system. We also need good infrastructure. We need good broadband, public transport and housing. To do that we must have a fair, decent, just taxation system. That is the kind of frame we operate in.