Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The Finance Bill 2013 merely carries on the failed austerity policies the Fine Gael and Labour Party in coalition have been implementing for two years. This does not prevent the Minister for Finance from trying to spin economic figures in favour of the Government. Introducing the Bill, he presented 0.8% growth in gross domestic product in the first three quarters of 2012 as if it were a success. I remind him that the Department of Finance, in December 2010 after the troika programme of salvaging the European speculators and bankers on the backs of Irish working people, forecast growth in 2012 of 3.2%, a decline in unemployment and an increase in the number of people at work. All these forecasts were nullified by the experience of the past two and a half years.

The austerity programme of cuts and tax increases is playing havoc with the domestic economy, yielding the disastrous unemployment situation, with approximately 444,000 people on the live register, emigration last year of approximately 80,000 people, mainly the young, and the general difficulty people are experiencing in surviving. Introducing the Bill, the Minister outlined growth in exports of 3.2% in the first three quarters of last year and indicated this was a major success. While every job in the export sector is welcome, the economic crisis and mass unemployment will not be resolved by export growth. Exports arise from areas of the economy which are generally highly capital intensive and do not, unfortunately, significantly increase the numbers at work relative to the amount of capital invested. Moreover, they do not in any way make up for the damage or decimation done to the domestic economy by the cuts and tax increases of this Government following on the example of the Government of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party.

Increasing investment is fundamental to job creation. Private investment has, however, collapsed catastrophically in the past five years and there is a paralysis of private investment all over Europe. According to McKinsey global forecasting, the decline in Ireland over this period was 64%. Last year, the financial press indicated that major European corporations in the eurozone and Britain were sitting on €3 trillion of accumulated profits which they failed to invest, while 26 million people are unemployed in the European Union. The reason they have not invested is that they are not confident of securing sufficient profit if they were to do so. European capitalism is, therefore, on an investment strike and when one combines this with savage austerity and cuts in public investment in many countries of Europe, one gets a eurozone economy in serious crisis.

The puny measures in this budget are totally inadequate to meet the extent of this crisis in Ireland. Some of the measures introduced in the past year or two, for example, the so-called JobBridge scheme, are contemptible initiatives designed simply to massage the figures. In the case of JobBridge, it provides exploitative packages to take young people off the official lists, while doing nothing to resolve the essential and serious problem of providing jobs. Radical measures are needed, including major investment in public infrastructure. Public funding should be directed into this area, rather than to continuing to fund the disastrous bailout of bankers and the European financial markets.

The Minister and Government refused to tax the top 5% of earners, despite our pre-budget submission demonstrating that this group of earners could afford to pay another €2.5 billion this year alone without breaking their hearts. This is the type of funding that is required for major infrastructural projects which could take tens of thousands of skilled and unskilled workers off the dole, kick-start the economy and recreate economic growth. Instead, Fine Gael and the Labour Party bowed to the financial markets in carrying out their programme. What we need to do, on a European basis, is break the power of the financial markets, take the major banks and financial institutions into public ownership under democratic control of working class people and in that way use and direct them towards investment in infrastructure for the good of society, rather than the destructive profits of a tiny elite.

The property tax, if allowed to be implemented in 2013 and onwards, will be another major drain on individuals and families, which will further depress the domestic economy and give another twist to austerity. There will be consternation if letters are issued to every home next month demanding hundreds of euro, to be joined the following year, if Government plans are implemented, by a water tax that will come close to €1,000 per household. This will give rise to a massive campaign of opposition which should be fully supported, as citizens and ordinary taxpayers bring their power democratically to bear on a Government that is putting the interests of bondholders and bankers before those of the majority.

Therefore, the boycott of that odious so-called property tax, a tax on the individual and the family home, should be supported and political pressure should be applied to force the Government to relent.

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