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

I wish I could say otherwise but today is another day of shame for this Government. It is not a day of hard choices, as it kept repeating. It is a day of cruel choices inflicted by those who are protecting the privileged and the powerful on those who are struggling and in despair. It is a day when it has driven tens of thousands of families who were teetering on the edge of poverty into poverty. It is a day when it has hammered a few more nails into the coffin of the battered Irish economy.

I say to the Tánaiste that this Government had a choice. A few simple measures could have done away with the need for all the suffering it has inflicted on ordinary families today. If it had simply enforced, as we suggested, the 12.5% corporation tax rate and increased in a significant way the taxes on those earning in excess of €100,000 a year, as 88% of the population now want it to do, it could have done away with the need for all this suffering and despair and all those families being driven into poverty.

If the Government had done that not only could it have prevented these vicious cuts but it would have had the resources to reverse some of the most vicious cuts imposed in recent years. It could have abolished the universal social charge for those on average incomes. It could have lifted the special needs assistant, SNA, caps that have caused such suffering to some of the most vulnerable families. It could have reinstated the Christmas bonus for social welfare recipients and for pensioners. It could have reinstated the home help hours for the elderly and the disabled. It could have reversed the increases in registration fees and the cuts in grants for students and many more of the nasty cuts that have been imposed in the past two years. To do all of that would have cost approximately €3 billion. Those measures alone would have been covered just by making the corporations that made €70 billion in pre-tax profits last year pay a little more tax, and all that suffering could have been avoided.

Instead, the Government made a coldhearted decision to attack those who have nothing or next to nothing yet again. The property tax will cost ordinary families hundreds of euro, €300 or €400 extra per year. How will the 1.3 million people in this country who have less than €50 a month left over pay the charge? They simply do not have it. How will they pay for the cuts to child benefit? If they have three children, they will lose €38 per month. How will they deal with the €20 per month loss in earnings if they are working, as a result of the abolition of the weekly PRSI allowance? The 1.3 million people with less than €50 a month after they pay their bills will have that €50 and more taken from them as a result of these measures. This will drive them into poverty.

Then there are some of the really nasty cuts. The decision to cut the respite care grant for families with children with disabilities is obnoxious. Some €356 has been taken from families with disabled children or family members when it could give them some respite once a year. It is an outrage to cut the back-to-school allowance by €50 for some of the poorest families in the country. The Government had choices to avoid this suffering and make those who have the money and the profits pay a little more so the poor and the struggling do not have to struggle more than they do. The Government could have marshalled funds by imposing taxes to fund a stimulus and jobs programme to put people in this country back to work so they can contribute to the economic recovery we so badly need. None of that will happen and, shamefully, the Government restated its commitment to selling off our forests and other State assets and enterprises that could be the vehicles for job creation and economic recovery. Shame on the Tánaiste and shame on this Government. This is a recipe for long-term economic depression and suffering for hundreds of thousands of families. The Government had a choice; why did it not take it?

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