Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

During this debate it has become clear that the Government is completely disconnected from the realities that face low and middle-income families or perhaps it is uninterested. Week after week - we have heard it again this evening - the lament comes from the Government benches. They cry crocodile tears about the lot they inherited when they entered into Government. They ring their hands with continual mention of Fianna Fáil - and all its wrongdoing - and the troika. However, Ministers on the same Government benches continue to pocket excessive salaries and to award each other additional allowances worth tens of thousands of euro. We are in an economic and social crisis, the scale of which is not lost on anybody on these benches. Based on the CSO quarterly national household survey, more than half of all households have cut back their spending on groceries. One fifth of households have delayed or missed paying their bills in order to meet their outgoings on basic goods and services. One in ten have delayed or missed a loan repayment. Some 45% of households have spent some or all of their savings. For lone-parent families the picture is even bleaker because one third of such households have borrowed money from family or friends, one in four have delayed or missed loan repayments and half have delayed or missed paying bills.

An extensive report funded by the Department of Social Protection published last week concluded comprehensively that low-income families and those who are unemployed do not have enough money to achieve a basic standard of living. I do not simply refer to the struggling people who rely on social welfare payments but also to those who are now referred to the coping classes or even the working poor. The Department of Finance's tax take figures for 2011 show the disproportionate effect its budgetary measures are having on low and middle-income families. Their figures indicate that someone on the minimum wage paid three times more tax in 2011 than in 2010. The Government makes much about those it has taken out of the universal social charge net. What is its view of the 200,000 people who earn just above the weekly threshold of €193 per week and remain subject to the charge? We have heard no word from the Government on that issue.

Those earning between €20,000 and €30,000 per year paid 36% more tax in 2011 than in the previous year. Those with incomes between €40,000 and €50,000 paid 23% more. Can those in the Government begin to imagine the hardship facing these families? They should do so because this is now the record of achievement of the Fine Gael and Labour Party Government. To compound the hardship, the Government has heaped additional taxes on the same low income and middle income families. Carbon tax and motor tax changes will hurt struggling families disproportionately. Taxing a mid-range car will cost drivers an additional €59 per year. Petrol will increase by 1.4 cent per litre and diesel by 1.6 cent per litre at a time when prices are already at an all-time high. These measures are a tax on families and workers. They are especially unfair for rural communities and dwellers who in the absence of public transport are more dependent on their cars than others. Government VAT increases serve only to push up the cost of living for those who can least afford it. Flat taxes such as the household charge are deeply inequitable and unfair. To rub salt into the wounds, the Government has not included an inability-to-pay clause with these charges.

It comes as no surprise to me that Fine Gael leaders and Ministers choose to heap additional taxes from the bottom up rather than the top down. I expect the Minister, Deputy Noonan, and his party cohorts to award bonanza salaries to each other and to lash out cash for their so-called special advisers. However, it is astonishing that the Labour Party Ministers are happy to row in along side their Fine Gael Cabinet colleagues. This morning the Minister, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, painfully, and using all sorts of mental and linguistic gymnastics, tried to justify to the nation why his party colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, should get an extra €17,250 per year simply for turning up to work on top of a salary of €130,000. If Ministers were serious about the business of Government and had any sense of connectedness with the hardship of low income and middle income families, they would revoke these ministerial allowances and cap their salaries. How on earth can any Minister reconcile at any level a tax on the low-paid with their whopping great salaries? As I understand it, the Labour Party in particular was founded on the principle that it would protect people from the bottom up. Yet, here we are. What makes those on the Government side different from those in Fianna Fáil? That is our question.

Sinn Féin's budget 2012 submission suggested the introduction of a third tax band on individual income in excess of €100,000 per year. We called on the Government to introduce a modest wealth tax such as the one implemented successfully in many other jurisdictions. These measures alone would have yielded €1.2 billion but the Government refused to implement them. Instead, it chose regressive taxation measures that hit the unemployed, low income and middle income families and the elderly hardest, all the while vigilantly protecting those at the top, including Government Members.

The Government has cut community employment scheme supports. It has deliberately targeted single parent families. Teaching supports for children with disabilities are becoming a privilege rather than a right. The Government has committed to cutting the State contributory and transition pensions from September this year. It has offered little respite for families struggling with unsustainable mortgage debt. It is reducing public service provision across the board and it is heaping additional taxes from the bottom up rather than from the top down. The Government is about to flog off the last of the State's wealth in the bargain bucket to the lowest bidder. All of this is taking place while Ministers still have the brass neck to tell citizens that they are worth €170,000 per year. I do not think so. The Government strategy is flawed. The Government declares it is about jobs and growth but it persists with cutbacks and austerity. The domestic economy is on the floor because it has been savaged, butchered and deflated by cutback after cutback. This kills off the prospects of growth and keeps people on the unemployment lines.

Let us have fewer of the homilies from Government about its commitment to protecting the vulnerable or to creating jobs. The Government's actions show us clearly that it took the baton and the blueprint from those in Fianna Fáil, whom it laments. Come hell or high water and irrespective of the consequences for ordinary working people, the Government is determined to implement the same policies, make the same mistakes and insist that citizens live with the consequences of all of it.

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