Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil leis an Teachta Maureen O’Sullivan as ucht an rún seo a chur os comhair na Dála. Tá sé tábhachtach go mbeadh díospóireacht againn arís ar an ábhar seo. Bhí díospóireacht againn níos luaithe sa Dáil faoi a leithéid de phróiséis i leith an bhuiséid.

Equality proofing and poverty proofing of major Government policies, not just the budget, should be built in. I am one of the members of the Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection who travelled to Scotland to examine how the equality budgeting system in the Scottish Parliament works. While it has its faults, it is something that we could consider. More is the pity that the Scottish vote for independence did not go the way I would have liked because it would have presented a challenge to the Scottish Parliament in terms of how it could have expanded the equality proofing of its budget to deal with taxation measures. That Parliament has not been granted power over these, no more than the Assembly in Stormont. There are challenges but they are not insurmountable, and those concerned have done great groundwork for this Government and others. While preparing for a budget, rather than after the fact, one could determine the impact that contemplated measures or changes in departmental Estimates would have on society in general. Equality proofing is to ensure the gap between the richest and poorest in society does not expand.

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However, according to my politics, it should be decreasing continuously, budget after budget. If a government stands on a platform of reducing that gap, there should be a measure to show that effect has been seen on its budgetary measures. While some will quote the ESRI's recent report stating that the highest losses were for those in the highest 10% of household income category, which may be true, the highest income categories are those who have a higher disposable income and the impact of higher cuts were not felt as hard by them as by those who were on the lowest pay, those who were dependent on social welfare or low-income earners who had major outlays on mortgages, etc. In attempting to measure the impact of policy changes on different groups, it may be insufficient to consider the percentage changes in income alone. We need, for instances, to take into account the quality of life and welfare equality of different groups in society. There is a multitude of issues.

All legislation is already supposed to have a poverty impact assessment but it is not obligatory. We need to ensure that whatever measures are taken, it is not a voluntary code and they are implemented in full. In this debate, we also need to look at the concept of maximum income that has developed over years. It is not a new concept. The maximum income concept has been championed, for instance, in the bastion of capitalism in the United State, the US military, where the highest paid cannot earn ten times more than the lowest paid. In Japan, it is a lower figure. Even though there are huge corporations in Japan where one would presume the CEOs would be on a significant wage, they never earn ten times more than the lowest paid in the factory. That is something we need to consider here. This Government made some attempt at putting caps on some of the higher paid in society but it breached those caps quite regularly. It is something on which the Government needs to respond, and rather than producing an amendment to the motion that does not take on board the spirit of the motion from Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan, the Government should have adopted her motion.

If one looks at the recent proposals on water charges which I heard the Minister champion earlier as a type of measure that will address inequality, in fact it does the opposite because the water conservation grant is the same whether one earns €1 million or is on social welfare. That is not an equality measure.

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