Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. Social protection is a broad canvas and it involves the provision of social supports for people who have been badly mauled through loss of jobs, reduced incomes, reductions in carer's allowance, fewer teacher supports and so on across the system. It is difficult to know where to begin when analysing the large-scale framework of what must be done. When the Government's revenues collapsed in 2008 it was left with the task of finding other revenues to make up for the precipitous fall. At the same time the Government had to achieve efficiencies and cost savings in State expenditure.

Government revenue can come from only two sources. I have heard arguments for widening the tax base through property taxes, water charges and so on but such revenue must come from two sources. The word "source" is French and means a well from which water is drawn. The two sources I refer to are taxes on income and expenditure, both personal and corporate. VAT and excise duty are examples of taxes on expenditure.

A labyrinthine bureaucracy of property taxes and water charges involving complex systems of collection and documentation misses the point because such taxes must be paid from personal and corporate incomes. The collapse of the economy in 2008 meant personal incomes took a huge hit - they all fell and some disappeared due to job loss. Indigenous businesses, including small farmers and small and medium-sized enterprises, also saw their incomes hit. However, many multinational companies based in Ireland saw increases in revenues and profits after 2008. This was due to higher sales, transfer pricing, the placement of expenses in other areas and so on. They reported higher profits.

I could not understand why the Government with the largest ever majority in the history of the State did not tap on the door of the corporates and explain that the country was on its knees and that it needed to replace the revenues to maintain expenditure and, at the same time, get efficiencies and savings from those expenditures. In other words, the Government should have explained that the State needed revenues but the people were flattened and had nothing left. The Government should have asked them for a 2.5% reported profits corporation national recovery levy, for example. Guess what? They would have paid it, and they would pay it still. In fact, they are opening the discussions on paying it now. The statelessness of these companies is under broad discussion and there is an agreement and an acceptance that they will actually start paying taxes to the countries over which they hover and earn their revenues. We missed an easy opportunity in that regard.

This is about fairness. I am approaching the idea of what is fair in our society. Why are there 700 homeless children in Ireland tonight, as we heard on Leaders' Questions? It is plain wrong. We need to get a little fairness back into the picture. We need to think about the areas of distress, including mortgages. Fully 100,000 mortgage clients are still in distress, but many of them have not been declared in distress because the banks are playing silly billies as regards the type of accounting they do. I know this because I am helping people out in this area. The banks have not yet shown these people as having distressed loans. In these cases the loan principal should be written down. I know this from experience.

Some of the occupational pension schemes have been visited with major unfairness. At the moment, the Irish Aviation Superannuation Scheme is in a state of total unfairness but it is ready for sign-off, and that is wrong. Deferred pensioners who have worked for 35 or 40 years, perhaps, and who accommodated their former employers by leaving early in order that there would be less of a bill for salaries and wages, find themselves termed "deferred members" of the pension scheme. The are facing cuts of 60% and perhaps up to 80% of what they had a reasonable expectation of under the defined benefit scheme. That is wrong. It is simply not right. If the mothers of the advisers to these schemes saw what was going on they would tell their sons or daughters doing such professional work that it was all wrong and that it was essentially unfair and inequitable. After 35 or 40 years' service, pensioners have a reasonable expectation not to be financially blown out of the water to the advantage of other members who are still employees of the firms in question, such as Aer Lingus, or existing pensioners who may have managed to become pensioners in recent times by a fluke of the calendar, while the others are waiting a little to become termed "pensioners".

We need to stop wading through and creating massive amounts of paper on taxes, the local property tax and water charges. A massive bureaucracy is being created, when the matter is really rather simple. People and corporates with good incomes can pay taxes. We can do the sums on how much money is needed for capital investment, for example, for water structure reconditioning and reinvestment for the next ten years.

The great shame is - I am embarrassed when I discuss it abroad - that our Government, with the largest ever majority, failed to tear up the promissory bonds amounting to €25 billion of absolutely odious manufactured bonds. This enabled the euro system to create a firewall during the panic of 2010 and 2011, but it has been left on the backs and shoulders of the current generation, the next generation and the next generation in turn. Up to 1.5 million people are hurting, and 500,000 of them are abroad, having emigrated. There are 100,000 in mortgage distress. Approximately 350,000 or 400,000 human souls will be distressed for the remainder of their working lives because the banks are not doing what they should be doing and because they did not get capitalised from their creditors. We need to examine the big overall frameworks and achieve fairness and equity in a narrative sense. The idea of tinkering with all the labyrinthine and complex mountains of paper is all wrong and there is no need for it.

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