Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach did not answer the specific question I put to him. Is it fair that someone on €18,000 gets €174 a year before he or she has to pay the water charges while someone on €100,000 gets €746? That is the basic proposition I put to the Taoiseach and I asked him a very simple question. Is that fair? I asked the Taoiseach a second question, namely what is the net revenue figure expected from the water charges regime. The Taoiseach did not answer that.

To come back to the first question, there are more than 660,000 people earning between €10,000 and €30,000 in our society today. The Government has taken a deliberate decision to ignore them. That is what was decided in the budget yesterday. When one puts in water charges and so on, they will not be better off as a result of the budget, they will be worse off. That is the bottom line. The Taoiseach took a political and principled decision to ignore people earning less than €30,000 and he did so to favour people earning over €70,000, over €100,000 and over €140,000.

Does he believe it is fair that someone on a low income will receive €174, while someone on a high income will get €764?

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