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

Those at the top who had grossly inflated earnings and a vast accumulation of wealth used that wealth, their position and their earnings to drive an economic agenda that has crashed our economy and the entire European economy. People want to know that we are serious about doing something rather than offering tokens and it seems to me this is tokenistic. The Government knows there is anger with high earners and it has decided on some measures and has made a song and dance about them. It held a referendum but it related only to judges and it provides for tokenistic reductions to €200,000 for the politicians or some top civil servants but it does not really address the problem.

This gives those in Government cover to claim that they are being even-handed and it attempts to justify the real agenda which will be meted out on Monday and Tuesday of next week when the Government will lay into social welfare recipients and the lowest income families, either in the form of cuts in child benefit or rent allowance, increases in VAT or whatever nasty, socially regressive austerity measures the Government decides is the best way to implement the diktats of the EU-IMF group.

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