Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

According to Social Justice Ireland, an unemployed couple got €1.51 a week or €78.52 a year back in the budget while a couple with two earners on €125,000 will receive an extra €23.57 a week or €1,255 a year. A couple on €125,000 each, very wealthy and comfortable, got 12 times more in the budget than somebody on the lowest income. How can the Minister say that is fair? One can argue on some sort of technical grounds that we have a progressive tax system. Even the Minister’s budget examples showed that somebody on very low earnings was getting back a quarter of what somebody on €70,000 or more was getting. I do not know how the Minister can say that is a fair distribution of whatever extra resources he had for tax breaks or concessions in the budget.

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