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

I want to protest against another despicable use of the guillotine in the debate on the Finance (No. 2) Bill 2013. Fine Gael and the Labour Party have again displayed outright contempt for the views of elected representatives who have come into the House even in the last hour and who have been crowded into very small time slots rather than engage in the type of consideration of the measures proposed in the Bill, which is needed. The Finance (No. 2) Bill enshrines the measures contained in another right-wing austerity-driven budget. Fine Gael and the Labour Party have continued the disastrous policies of their predecessors, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, which is essentially to continue to place the burden of the crisis of European capitalism and the crisis resulting from the madness of the profit-driven financial markets system on to the shoulders of working class people, of middle and lower income workers, of pensioners, of young people and of society generally.

This budget contains the most cruel attacks and contempt for the youth, with the cuts to the jobseeker's payments for younger people up to 25 years, which is not so young, and with the cynical strategy of forcing them to take the most menial jobs at the discretion of whatever employers offer. There is a cruel attack on maternity benefit and on elderly people's medical cards. In fewer than two months, every household in this country, the majority of whom are ordinary low or middle income workers, unemployed or pensioners, will face a full year demand for the new home tax, or the so-called "local property tax".

Currently all over this country, construction crews are breaking up the pavements in front of people's homes and placing water meters in front of them at a cost of €538 million of taxpayers' funds to facilitate another tax on a vital natural necessity, namely, water. Bogus conservation arguments have been advanced that it is about preserving water which is already treated with taxpayers' funds. We do not take that seriously from this Government or from previous Governments which, over the past 20 years, lifted not a finger to include significant water conservation measures in the building by-laws that could have drastically reduced the amount of treated water used in households. The savings said to result from metering, if equivalent to British use which is privatised and metered, may be 2% of treated water. Some 40% leaks into the ground, so it is obvious where that €538 million should be invested, namely, in rectifying the infrastructure.

The Government again chose to hit ordinary people with further new burdens as part of the continuing demand by the European establishment that the financial markets systems, the gamblers and speculators, would be bailed out. A wealth tax for every 1% on the very top echelons of this society could yield €580 million per annum. Seamus Coffey, a conservative economist, reckons that the effective rate of corporation tax is 8%. Therefore, for every 1% increase in corporation tax, €525 million could be raised. If it was even approaching the European average of 18%, that would be a substantial extra resource. Progressively increased income tax placed on the top 10% of income earners would have yielded very significant resources, as would a financial transaction tax.

It is outrageous that this country will pay approximately €8.5 billion in interest alone on the odious debt imposed on our people by the European establishment and accepted by cowardly Governments for debts with which the Irish people have nothing to do. There are substantial resources there that could have been used for major job investment programmes. The Nevin institute states that for every €1 billion one invests in infrastructure, 14,000 jobs can be created. We could, therefore, have programmes for tens of thousands and a rebooting of this economy but we have a Government which is wedded to the financial markets system and which puts itself and our people at the mercy of the speculators. Does anybody believe the speculators and the financial markets will take seriously that this State is rocketing forward economically? I fully expect that the sharks will begin to circle again in a year or two years as the reality of the disaster that is austerity becomes clear.

The Government is relying on a discredited system and is condemning youth and working class people to ongoing despair and difficulty. That is why I am committed to socialist policies and to the socialist transformation of society where wealth is in democratic ownership, in public ownership, as the financial institutions should be, and to utilising the wealth and resources to rectify the problems and for major infrastructural and other investment to create jobs for our people and to transform life for our people by contrast with this disaster which is occurring currently.

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