Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

Thank you, Chairman.

One of the Government spokespersons described the USC as an anomaly and said it was not perfect. That is an unbelievable understatement in view of the reality of the USC. I hope it is not, but I fear it is, an indication of a lack of intention on the part of the Government to reverse the charge, perhaps watering it down or diluting it instead. The USC is not an anomaly; it is not simply imperfect. It is a disgusting attack on low- and middle-income families carried out by a now thankfully discredited Government, on whom ordinary people rightly took their revenge in the recent election. This attack is now threatening to put tens of thousands of ordinary working people under - people who are unable to pay their bills or meet their mortgage repayments and who are really struggling. They are in no way responsible for the economic crisis, but they are being asked to pay for it.

As well as being an anti-social charge, it is a bankers' tax. It was the decision of the last Government to cold-bloodedly transfer responsibility for the banking crisis created by it and its banker and speculator friends on to the backs of working people. That was a choice it made, as a number of other people have said.

Some of the facts about the USC are truly shocking. The UNITE trade union, using the Deloitte tax calculator, unearthed the fact that those who earn more than €1 million per year will be €24,000 better off as a result of this charge, while ordinary working families will lose hundreds. The ESRI estimates that there will be no wage growth in the economy next year, but non-wage income - rents, dividends, interest and self-employment - will grow by 29%. The shocking fact revealed in the Sunday Independent rich list was that the richest few hundred people in this country are €6.7 billion richer this year than they were last year. We have taken from the poor to protect the rich. That is what the last Government did and, sadly, this Government is beginning to look very lukewarm about reversing it.

I have proposals for the Government, because I do not intend only to be critical. If it is serious in its sentiments of concern about the injustice of the USC, not to mention its economic counter-productiveness in sucking money from the pockets of people who could spend it, I suggest that it completely scrap the charge and institute a 1% - I would like to see 5%, but I will settle for 1% - wealth tax on the assets of people who have assets of more than €1 million. That would yield, even based on the most conservative estimates, €1.2 billion, which is nearly three times what the USC has earned for the State. Could we have a tax of just 1% on the wealthiest people instead of the USC? If the Government is serious, it will consider that. I would like to see higher wealth taxes to help reverse all the other cuts, but I ask it to commit just to that simple thing - a 1% tax on the richest people to remove the injustice of the USC. That is the sort of commitment the Government should give tonight.

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