Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This Minister can come into the House until the cows come home and peddle his mistruths about Sinn Féin's economic policies. He referred to increasing tax on everybody. That is blatantly untrue and, as Minister for Finance, he knows that to be untrue. Unless he is not reading any of our submissions, he will know that we do not want to increase taxes on low and middle income earners and that we want to reduce the tax burden by scrapping property taxes and water charges. Can the Minister not deal with the debate in terms of facts and figures and what I proposed today, which is that the ESRI did not state that if one has no tax liability one will not pay any tax? It stated the measure benefits strongly the top 10% of earners in Irish society, namely, the richest of the rich.

In effect, it means that two earners in a household, each earning €70,000, a total of €140,000, will benefit more. An income of €140,000 is €100,000 more than the average income of households across the State. This is the type of measure the Minister wants to introduce. Even the IMF stated that putting money back into the pockets of those who need it most is the best way to achieve economic recovery. This is not just about economic recovery, rather, it is about economic inequality, something to which the Government is completely and utterly blind. The last number of budgets is testament to that fact.

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