Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I commend my colleague, Deputy Broughan, on the work he has done on this Bill. He has devoted his political career to fighting for fairness and greater equality. This Bill is a natural follow-on from that. The contribution of the Minister of State, Deputy Nash, was disappointing to say the least. The Bill’s purpose is to shine a light on what is actually happening in the area of income as we have little information on it. It was interesting that the Minister of State concentrated on his initiative on fair pay. This Bill, however, deals with the much wider issue and the other side of that coin. I very much welcome what the Minister of State is doing with the low-pay commission. I hope it will result in an increase in the minimum wage and move towards a policy for a living wage.

The other side of that is who pays for it. We cannot have that open debate unless we know who is earning what and who owns what. That is one of the main purposes of this Bill. There is a significant dearth of basic information as to who owns what and who earns what. This Bill has the potential to shine a light on that. As citizens, we should all be entitled to have that basic information. Unfortunately, we are being denied that. It is hard to see any justification for that. Why is it we should not have that entitlement to know who owns the wealth in the country and what are the relative levels of pay?

We know the gap between rich and poor is widening, a point the Minister of State disputed. Within companies, the gap between those on lowest pay and highest pay is widening generally as well. This widening gap is leading to growing levels of dissatisfaction among the public.

It is important that people would have a greater understanding of what is happening in the country in terms of income and wealth, if we are all in this together, which was the mantra that was used during the recession. We saw during that very difficult period that the mantra did not hold true. Going forward, we should be in a position where the highest level of information on wealth is available to everybody. That is one of the primary aims of the Bill and it is one worth supporting.

Having the level of information sought by the Bill available would allow for a proper and open debate on budgetary matters. The Government promised an open budgetary process but, unfortunately, that has not happened. We are continuing with the charade of the budget being kept top secret until the day it is announced, which is nonsense. The lead-in to the budgetary process should be much longer. The fullest amount of information should be available to people in order to consider the options in terms of crafting the budget. We cannot do that in any kind of meaningful way unless the basic information is available. It is frustrating for Members of this House to ask questions of the Department of Finance and to get back replies to the effect that the information is not available, that an unwarranted amount of time would be required to produce the information or the information is not collected in that format. One cannot but think that unless there is very clear direction on providing all of the budgetary information and all of the data on budgetary measures that we cannot have a full and proper debate on the matter.

Sometimes I come to the conclusion that particular information is not available because nobody wants us to know who is benefiting from previous budgetary measures. That is very much the case in relation to pensions, for example. I refer to the tax relief that has traditionally been available to high rollers for pension pots. It seems incredible that we had a situation up to very recently where very wealthy individuals could accumulate huge pension pots funded largely by taxpayers and we did not have information on how much that was costing the State. We were operating on the basis of estimates.

The smoke and mirrors in terms of the impacts of budgets and what is intended in finance Bills is undoubtedly designed to keep people in the dark about levels of income in this country and who is benefitting from budgetary measures. It is not acceptable that there is a fog over the entire area. We should be entitled to know who is benefiting. Following on from that I wish to address the high level of lobbying that goes on in respect of the budget and the finance Bill. Again, it is very much a grey area. We are not clear on it. Those who can best afford to do so, can bring in very powerful lobbyists to act on their behalf to ensure they get a bigger slice of the cake than anybody else. I would have thought the Government might have done something about that.

A number of speakers referred to a potential situation arising from what Deputy Broughan has proposed whereby, for example, people coming to this country with foreign direct investment companies may have their incomes impacted on and that it would have a negative effect on the country. I do not buy that for a moment. For a start, the special assignee relief programme, SARP, is in place to facilitate such people. Another point is that people who come to live in this country make the decision based on a series of factors apart from income. They base their decision on the quality of life in this country. There is not much quality of life if there are huge gaps between rich and poor because there is all the dissatisfaction and unrest that goes with that. Equally, one does not have a very good quality of life if there is not adequate investment in education, transport and health services among others. Social cohesion, good quality of life, fairness and equality are factors that very much play on people’s minds when they are thinking about coming to live in this country, especially if they are coming with their families. It is very simplistic to make that argument.

I was interested to note that the Ceann Comhairle criticised Deputy Broughan for naming people who are the high earners in this country. He did not accuse anyone, he merely made a statement of fact. It is interesting that the Ceann Comhairle jumped in so quickly to stop him doing that. I was also interested in the response of the Minister of State, Deputy Gerald Nash, and the title of his speech. He stated fair pay is a political not a statistical issue, but one cannot have a fair regime without good statistics. That is the whole point of the Bill. Unless one has the facts, one is in the dark. That would seem to be the case given the figures the Minister of State quoted in his speech, which are simply not accurate. I ask him to correct the record in that regard. He made the point that the number of people earning more than €100,000 has reduced. That happened during the recession, under the previous Government. The move towards a more progressive tax system also happened during the term of the previous Government.

If one looks at the up-to-date figures on the different levels of income earned, 150,000 people earn in excess of €100,000. The number is increasing. The trend is going in the wrong direction, contrary to the Minister of State’s claim. Recent figures also show that approximately 368,000 people on incomes under €9,000 a year gained nothing from the previous budget. If the Minister of State does not believe me, I invite him to look at the social impact assessment produced by the Department of Social Protection on the main welfare and tax measures for 2015. A bar chart in the document shows clearly that in last year’s budget the bottom and top quintiles were affected to the greatest extent. I urge the Minister of State to look at the statistics, in spite of all the claims he made on this year's budget. We need statistics if we are to have an honest debate. The claim was not made by Deputy Broughan or me, it was made by the ESRI. The data clearly show that the top quintile benefited to the greatest extent and the bottom quintile benefited to the least extent from the measures introduced by the Government in the recent budget. The data are going in the reverse direction to that claimed by the Minister of State. I urge him to face up to the reality of the effects of the budget in terms of achieving any level of fairness or equality in this country. It is important that we have the facts. In order that we are not talking in the dark, but about the facts, it is important that Deputy Broughan’s Bill is introduced. The greater the light shone on what is happening in this country and the level of income and wealth inequality the better as far as I am concerned, and the better help that is to achieving some level of fairness.

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