Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The last budget led to an increase of 1.3% in taxes for a worker on an annual salary of €20,000, while a worker with a salary of €100,000 experienced a 0.2% increase in taxes. That means the impact on the person earning €20,000 was six times greater than on the person earning €100,000. What measures are being taken in this budget to counteract the situation where those who cannot afford to pay for the mistakes of bankers and governments are being forced to pay a higher proportion than those who can? Rising inequality, massive youth unemployment, rising levels of poverty and homelessness, diminishing quality and rising costs of public services, as well as increasing instances of social unrest, violence and crime can no longer be blamed on the after effects of the financial crisis. These are this Government's legacy.

The Government, and its predecessor, has not seriously looked at alternatives but has pretended the troika forced its hand in increasing inequality and poverty in this country. One in ten children now lives in consistent poverty, one in ten people experiences food poverty while over 50,000 people were forced to leave Ireland in a year. We have astronomical school-class sizes and an understaffed health sector that puts lives, including pregnant women’s, at risk. This is the work of the Government. The hand-wringing and talk of tough budgets is disingenuous. The Government has made a political choice in presenting this budget today, as it did with the past two budgets.

Worryingly, the so-called party of equality, the Labour Party, has overseen successive budgets that have been termed “regressive” by the ESRI and that have clearly disadvantaged certain social groups disproportionately. The Department of Social Protection’s own analysis of budget 2013 showed that lone-parent households and households with children were hardest hit. Sadly, for the public not much has changed in budget 2014 with mothers penalised again with increases in maternity benefit tax and young people’s welfare provision reduced.

Neither of these is a surprising move by this Government, given its track record to date. It, instead, chooses the unsustainable path, the socially divisive path, the regressive path, the path that has been tested again and again and found wanting. We have failed to learn from the lessons of some disastrous austerity measures of the past. Latin America and South-East Asia had the same type of austerity shoved down their necks by the International Monetary Fund in the 1980s and 1990s. It was only when they found the strength and courage to ignore them and take a different path that they managed to turn their economies around, not just for business but, more important, for their people.

These measures included regulation of fiscal and monetary policies, the introduction of new capital control mechanisms, increasing direct taxation revenues, applying well-directed, progressive fiscal and industrial policies, increased social spending, strengthening regional institutions by boosting their financial reserves, reinforcing public institutions, contributing directly to strengthening democracies and recovering key public roles. In some instances, they carried out programmes of debt cancellation. This Government is not seriously pursuing any of these measures. In fact, in some cases it is charging in precisely the opposite direction. Instead of looking at the situation from anything resembling a rational standpoint - that is taking for granted that it is rational to look after the interests of the people of our country irrespective of class – the Government seems to have no capacity to think seriously about the damage it is unleashing on the nation today and well into the future.

The programme for Government states "equality is at the heart of what it means to be a citizen in our democracy. This Government believes that everyone has the right to be free from discrimination and that we all benefit from living in a more equal society" yet the Government presides over a significant increase in inequality. According to a recent Oxfam report, inequality in Ireland is four times the OECD average. All but those at the top echelons of our society are feeling the debilitating effects of the current fiscal and social policies implemented by the Government. The Government not only does not give a damn about inequality but actively promotes it.

Is the Government aware just how its policies affect people? It is playing a dangerous game with the lives of others, the majority of whom it will never meet. It really does appear it does not stop to think about the people, their lives and their needs. In contrast, it has done very well in looking after the needs of the financial markets, the banks, the captains of industry, the protected professionals and global corporations. This budget will do nothing to provide jobs for our young people. The Government is making this country uninhabitable for our young people who continue to leave in their tens of thousands. For what? For the sake of people who do not need the Government’s help, many of whom do not even live here. The Government has declared economic war on its own people. It is successful in driving our young people out of the country. It is not a brain drain; it is an expulsion of our youngest and brightest.

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