Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I will start with the Government's amendment. It is quite surreal that it would argue that the top 10% have lost the most in the last seven years of austerity. It is more of the Alice in Wonderland delusion. It must be the reason the Fine Gael Party was barricaded in Mayo last weekend and the Labour Party will be barricaded this weekend. They are living on another planet.

A total of €31 billion has been taken out of the economy in cuts and increased taxes in the last six years. It has had a catastrophic effect. It was quite incredible to hear a Labour Party Deputy in the last half hour dispute that there is real inequality in Ireland, using the same arguments as neoliberal, right-wing economists, and say that our inequality compares very well with the rest of the EU. Individual consumption costs in Ireland are 20% higher than the EU average. These are the costs of energy, going to a doctor and so forth which people pay every day and week. The Government obviously does not have any time for the Deputies on this side of the House who tell it this, but UNICEF has condemned this Government from a height for increasing child poverty to one in four and it says that people have lost ten years of income because of austerity.

Even John FitzGerald, an establishment economist with the ESRI, has stated that Ireland has the most unequal market incomes in the OECD and that the taxation system does nothing to correct it. I will not waste time arguing this. Everyone knows that there is no recovery and they know what they are feeling.

I wish to focus on an issue which was mentioned earlier, that is, where the money will come from to reverse the austerity and to give people a decent standard of living. The Anti-Austerity Alliance would say to repudiate the debt which is eating up €1 of every €8 earned in this country. We did not create and build up this debt. The debt was €47.4 billion in 2007. In 2014, it was €215 billion. So much for people partying. This debt was not created by ordinary working people. The Anti-Austerity Alliance budget statement calls for four measures. These are the introduction of an emergency millionaire's tax, an increased tax on the top 10%, the introduction of a financial transactions tax and making the corporations pay their taxes at the effective rate. These are just some of the measures which could be taken to take control of wealth in this country and to end austerity.

We are led to believe that there is no money in the country. The Government is telling us the top 10% have lost out. They have not. The 250 richest people in this country own €57 billion and they increased their wealth by 12% during the recession. Their wealth did not go down. Just 1% of the population owns 20% of the wealth. I assume the Minister of State does not think the Central Bank is telling lies when it estimates that household wealth in this country is €504 billion. The potential to tax this wealth is incredible if only the Government were willing to do it. The trend is global and Ireland is no different. Oxfam has pointed out that one busload of people has the same wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion people. This is obscene. I would not hark back to the past glories of this Government and the Labour Party, in particular, in the post-Second World War situation. The Labour Party has now bought lock, stock and barrel into the establishment. It is part of the problem and it is to be hoped that it will be decimated in the next election for its betrayal of working class people.

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