Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 2 February 2022

Committee on Budgetary Oversight

Indexation of Taxation and Social Protection System: Discussion (Resumed)

Photo of Neasa HouriganNeasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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It may be surprising but people watch these committees. The public should know that what we are talking about for decision-making is largely anonymised data that is disaggregated and not in any way traceable to the person. It is more about understanding what life is really like in Ireland and being able to use those numbers to make decisions.

I am nearly out of time but I have another question relating to the 2019 paper. I always find it incredibly useful when people give examples from other countries. I am interested in the variation across countries, although I know some of this data are older. It is interesting that Denmark has a completely unified system, so does the ESRI have a position on what country is doing this well that the committee could consider? As we go down the list, which includes Finland, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand, it seems many of those countries were considering aspects such as price indexing. In fairness, not just today but last week when we had representatives of Social Justice Ireland and the Nevin Economic Research Institute in, we hear that wages are a much better benchmark. Are we seeing difficulties for those countries or has the economic research community come to a position that the wage benchmark is better? How did those countries get to that position as a group? Is that from a different era and we have moved on?