Dr. Se?n Healy:

For us, the social contract is the critical issue underpinning the way society operates and whether things are accepted or rejected. There is an expectation that this is delivered by the State. People pay their taxes because they expect the services. In our view, the issue that leads to the breakage we see is that it is not treated as a unit. For us there are five aspects. What do people want? They want a decent economy, good services, fair taxation, good participation in shaping the decisions that affect them in society, and sustainability. Those are the five things. What we have is a system that deals almost completely with each of those individually but does not actually go across them. At the particular moment the Deputy refers to, at the start of Covid-19 just three years ago, there was a huge cohesion. One thing was that the system was working towards a single end and society wanted that end. There was a generosity about it, for example because the payment was €350 a week when the welfare payment was just €203. It was clear why there was no objection to it, when people were getting €350. Not only that but there was an openness to recognise that they were not going to keep people just because they did not make the age. There was a flexibility about how to deal with it. People were on either side crossing the boundaries between the pieces.

The critical issue for us is that these things need to be put together into a single contract.

There could be a contract for tax on the fiscal side and a contract on the economy. Sometimes people think of the economy only or the economy and services and do not look at the tax and participation issue, which is very important, or the sustainability issue. The five elements together are what we require. It is deliverable but to deliver it we need a new social dialogue. I hope I am not overdoing this but I will send the committee some documents. We have written two publications. One was generated completely by ourselves and the other involved all the traditional social partner pillars plus a range of other actors, from the OECD, the European Commission and others. Our publication is approximately 200 pages and looks at the new social contract and the five headings I have spoken about. The other is "A New Social Contract, A New Social Dialogue". Interestingly, all of the traditional pillars, including employers, trade unions, farmers, the environmental pillar and the community and voluntary pillar, agree there is a need for a new social dialogue involving all five pillars. This has not been taken up by the Government since then despite our strong urging of it and, in fairness, strong urging from other quarters.