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

I move:

“That Dáil Éireann:

notes the incontrovertible evidence that the impact of austerity cuts and regressive charges since the economic crash in 2007/8 has contributed to a consistent rise in poverty, deprivation and hardship and that this situation has continued to worsen under the current Government;

notes, in this regard, that:

— the Central Statistics Office’s (CSO) Survey on Income and Living Conditions shows the number of households suffering deprivation has risen from 24.5 per cent in 2011 to 30.5 per cent in 2013 and the number living in consistent poverty has risen from 6.9 per cent to 8.2 per cent;

— the CSO also shows that the levels of deprivation and persistent poverty among one parent families are even more shocking, with the number of one parent families suffering deprivation rising from 49.5 per cent in 2012 to 63.2 per cent in 2013 and the number living in consistent poverty rising from 17.4 per cent to 23 per cent in the same period;

— according to Barnardos, in 2013, 12 per cent of children (aged 0-17 years) lived in consistent poverty - up more than 137,000 from 9.9 per cent in 2012 and double the 6 per cent figure of 2008;

— UNICEF found that child poverty rose by 10 per cent to 28.6 per cent between 2008- 2012, an increase of 130,000 more children living in poverty;

— poverty among older people rose from 1.1 per cent to 1.9 per cent between 2009 and 2011; the deprivation rate has increased from 9.5 per cent to 11.3 per cent over the same period and deprivation among older people living alone is even higher at 15.3 per cent;

— the Age Action survey on Budget 2014 found 90 per cent of respondents said 487 budgetary measures affecting older people were unfair, noting prescription charges, telephone allowance, changes in income limits for medical cards, property tax, fuel allowance and other recent budgetary measures;

— according to the CSO, 45 per cent of people with disabilities experience income poverty and 36 per cent of people with disabilities experience basic deprivation;

— Social Justice Ireland states that a total of 750,000 people, including more than 232,039 children, are living in poverty in Ireland;

— according to the Irish League of Credit Unions 480,000 people have no money at the end-of-month after paying bills and 1.7 million have €100 or less; and

— 16 per cent of adults with an income below the poverty line are working and that according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Employment Outlook 2013 22 per cent of Irish workers are low-paid (earning less than two-thirds of the country’s median income), the second highest level of low-pay in the OECD;

notes an explosion in the housing and homelessness crisis over the last three years, resulting from rent increases, changes to rent allowance, evictions, and a chronic shortage of council and social housing - leading in turn to a dramatic increase in time waiting on housing lists (up to 14 years), families being forced into inappropriate emergency accommodation, and a 21 per cent rise in the number of people sleeping rough;

further notes that:

— shocking increases in poverty, deprivation and hardship have occurred at the same time that total net household wealth in Ireland has increased, corporate profits have risen, and a small minority of top earners continue to enjoy extremely high earnings; and

— significant evidence exists suggesting that a very wealthy minority at the top of Irish society have been fully insulated from the deprivation and hardship suffered by so many Irish citizens;

notes, in this regard, that:

— according to the Central Bank (Quarterly Bulletin Q4 2014) total net household wealth in Ireland stood at €508 billion, marking its seventh consecutive rise since the second quarter of 2012 - an increase of 13.7 per cent in total household wealth; and

— while no definitive statistics on the distribution of this wealth are currently kept by the Department of Finance, a number of reports and analyses exist which all point to a heavy concentration of this wealth in the hands of a small percentage of the wealthiest households and individuals;

notes, for example, that:

— the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2014 states the wealthiest 1 per cent of households own 27.3 per cent of all wealth, the top 10 per cent own 58.5 per cent of all wealth and that there are currently 92,000 millionaires in Ireland;

— Think-tank for Action on Social Change estimates, based on an Economic and Social Research Institute study carried out in 1991 and extrapolated onto current total wealth figures, that the top 5 per cent of households hold 28.7 per cent of all wealth (i.e. 82,919 households hold €145 billion), 10 per cent of households hold 42.3 per cent of all wealth (i.e. 165,824 households hold €215 billion) whereas the bottom 50 per cent of households (829,122) hold just 12.2 percent of this wealth (€62 billion);

— the CSO’s Household Finance and Consumption Survey 2013 suggested that the top 20 per cent of incomes have almost 40 per cent of the wealth, while the bottom 20 per cent have only 11.4 per cent;

— Social Justice Ireland states that the richest 10 per cent of households received 24 per cent of total disposable income, whereas the poorest 10 per cent of households received only 3 per cent of total disposable income;

— the deeply unequal distribution of wealth suggested by the above is broadly in line with the rest of Europe, where the European Central Bank’s 2013 Household and Finance and Consumption Survey shows a similar distribution of wealth across Europe, where the wealthiest 10 per cent of households hold 50.4 per cent of all household wealth and the top 5 per cent hold 37.2 per cent;

— according to the Department of Finance, the top 1 per cent (21,650) of earners have an annual gross income of €8.7 billion, with average earnings of €403,703 per year - more than ten times the average industrial wage; and

— according to the Revenue Commissioners latest available statistics, corporate profits are also increasing, with gross trade profits increasing to €73.8 billion in 2011 up from €70.8 billion in 2010;

resolves to:

— abolish all tax measures that are regressive in nature or that disproportionately affect those on lower incomes particularly water charges, property tax and the Universal Social Charge for those earning less than €35,000;

— reverse all the cuts to One Parent Family Payment recipients including the abolition of concurrent payments, changes to the income disregard and the phasing out of payments to those with children over seven years of age;

— reverse all cuts to the Child Benefit payments;

— urgently establish a comprehensive and affordable early childcare programme;

— restore the full rate of Jobseeker's Allowance to people under 26 years of age;

— abolish individual prescription charges;

— reverse the cuts to the telephone allowance, the fuel allowance and the Household Benefits Package;

— reverse the cut to the Respite Care Grant;

— fund an emergency programme to directly build a minimum of 10,000 council houses per year over the next five years and put adequate appropriate emergency accommodation in place to end the homelessness crisis; and

— introduce rent controls and to increase rent support to a level that ensures no one is made homeless or forced into poverty by unaffordable accommodation costs;

and calls on the Minister for Finance to:

— instruct his Department to immediately draw up a programme for financing the measures above with taxes that focus on wealth, profits and top earners; and

— ensure that all budgetary measures considered in future will be subject to poverty and deprivation impact analysis before being implemented.”

A phrase I really dislike is "the poor will always be with us." Even though most people would not utter this sentiment considering the policies pursued by this Government and governments over the past 25 years, one would have to conclude that somehow that sentiment is lurking behind the approach to policy, that poverty will be always there and because there is nothing we can do about it, we should not bother even trying.

That is a pretty serious allegation, but sadly the facts bear it out. It is to the great shame of the Government that under its watch poverty, deprivation and inequality in our society have worsened dramatically.

The figures never fully get to the human reality and the cruelty that the people behind those statistics suffer. None the less, they speak volumes about the disastrous failure of this Government to honour a commitment it made and repeated time and again, namely, protecting the vulnerable, that whatever else it had to do, it would protect the vulnerable. All the facts and evidence from every quarter show, to the point where they are overwhelming, that the Government has failed utterly to do that. It has not protected them. In fact, it has persecuted them with the policies that have been pursued over the past three years. The evidence is really shocking and shameful.

As the Minister is aware, UNICEF recently produced a report suggesting that child poverty in this country had reached the obscene level of 28% of our children living in some kind of poverty with 12% living in consistent poverty. We are talking about 232,000 children living in poverty, an increase in recent years of 137,000 children. This is a situation that has dramatically worsened under this Government.

If anything, the situation for lone parents is even more catastrophic. The number of lone parents living in deprivation has gone from 49% in 2012 to 63% now - a shocking increase - with 23% of those lone parents living in consistent poverty. The elderly have also suffered to the point that 11% of our old people live in deprivation and 15% of older people who live alone suffer deprivation.

In light of the fact that the Government that claims it wants to incentivise work, we find a disastrous situation where 16% of those who are working suffer deprivation and we have the second highest level of low pay anywhere in the OECD, trailing after only the US, so we find ourselves second in the league table on almost all the indicators of gross inequality. We now find ourselves in a situation where 27% of the total population of this country - just under one million adults - suffer deprivation. They are going without basic things such as food, heating or housing.

There is, of course, the housing crisis itself, which has reached catastrophic proportions. The number of homeless people on the streets increased by 21%. Housing lists were always shockingly long. We now find that where people would have waited six or seven years, they are now waiting 14 or 15 years to get housed and still have no prospect of getting housed any time soon.

This is really a shameful indictment of this Government. I have laid out a lot of facts and statistics and I thank all sorts of groups like Single Parents Acting for the Rights of Kids, Barnardos, TASC, the Children's Rights Alliance, the CSO and official and bank sources. All of them show the same evidence of a massive increase in deprivation that has accelerated under this Government, particularly given some of the really vicious social protection cuts imposed by the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection, a Labour Party Minister. If there is any point in putting a Labour Party into Government, it is surely so that it will do something to protect precisely such groups as I am talking about but, shamefully, under Labour, poverty, deprivation and inequality have got dramatically worse.

This is not the whole picture. Often when these points are made to the Government, it says that we have all had a hard time, everybody has suffered and we have just come out of the troika arrangement and the worst economic crisis in the history of the State. However, the motion shows and the evidence is incontrovertible that while the poor have got poorer and the number of people in poverty has grown, the rich have got richer. It is official and it is a fact. Not everybody is getting poorer. Not only have the top echelons of society not got poorer, they have got a hell of a lot richer. Again, this is not simply an assertion. It is borne out by the facts. The Central Bank quarterly reports show that total household wealth and assets have increased every single quarter since 2012, increasing by 13.7% to the point where there is net wealth in this country of €508 billion that has been increasing during the same years that the poor have got poorer and deprivation has risen for some of the most vulnerable sections of our society. While there is a myriad of reports and the figures vary slightly from one to the other, all of the reports show that the top 5% to 10% of our population own between 40% and possibly 58% of all that wealth I just described. That means that the top 10% own somewhere between €200 billion and €250 billion and this figure has increased at precisely the same time that the poor have got poorer. That is shameful and means that the Government's policies have exacerbated inequality, insulated the super-wealthy and promoted the interests and wealth of the super-elite while ordinary people - lone parents, children, the elderly and the working poor - have been crushed into the dirt.

Unbelievably, Government Ministers and media commentators wonder why people on the streets are angry. They just have to look at the areas where the protests have been most vociferous to know why they are angry - Coolock, Darndale, Ballymun, Ballybrack, Dublin 8, Crumlin, Ballyfermot and Cherry Orchard. All of these places have been absolutely annihilated with cuts, poverty and deprivation. All of the statistics I have given are far higher in those areas. Other sections of our society have been insulated.

I do not have time to bombard the Minister with all the facts and statistics but they are laid out and have been laid out repeatedly by all the organisations to which I have referred. Could we reverse things like regressive taxes, be they water charges, property taxes, the universal social charge on low-income earners, the cuts to lone parent payments, rent allowance, the telephone allowance, the household benefits package, child benefit and the housing budget, all of which have contributed directly to a rise in deprivation, poverty, suffering and hardship? Could we do that by putting a bit more of the burden on the millionaires and the super-wealthy - the top ten earners in this country who have average earnings of €400,000 per year? Could they not afford to pay a bit more tax to stop children and the poor of this country from suffering cruelly?

See this speech in context