Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to speak briefly about the Bill. I was trying to find any philosophy behind the Government's distribution of money in social welfare payments, but it did not take me very long to work it out. It was, quite simply, that the Government had decided it had a certain amount of money to distribute - it found an awful lot of money in a hurry recently - and it decided it would distribute it very thinly among a large number of the electorate in order to buy as many votes as possible. That is, unfortunately, what Governments have always done and it is what the Government is doing also. I do not think it is necessarily going to work because in my experience those who are the beneficiaries of social welfare expenditure are saying in every case that what they are getting is a pittance. Some of them find the increases insulting; others find that they are too little, while a lot of them feel the money was taken away from them in the first place for reasons beyond their control and that they are now getting back only a small portion of what they consider is due to them. That is the reality. There has not been the surge in the polls to the Labour Party that it might have expected, given that the Government had some largesse to distribute. That is because people believe they have suffered enough and that they should get back what they had in the first place and perhaps a little more besides.

By my calculations, the increase in the old age pension of €3 per week will buy people an extra six cigarettes. It will not even buy them an extra cigarette a day. That is the kind of money they have been given back. Those in receipt of child benefit will receive an extra €5 per child per month. The amounts involved are, therefore, very small. The Government’s approach is based on the philosophy that if it spreads the benefits very thinly, it will buy each vote one by one and that it will win the election. I do not think people are deceived by this or will buy it. I do not think the Labour Party has benefited, although it is claiming the credit for it. A different approach should have been taken.

I do not understand why when the Government makes so much fuss about its ability to broaden the tax base and its philosophy in that regard, it has narrowed the tax base in the budget. That is what it has done by excluding people from USC, quite rightly. The Government stated it had broadened the tax base by imposing a property tax and water rates, but it did not really; it has actually hit the same people with slightly different tax rates. The Government is playing with words. If it really wanted to broaden the tax base, it would have read The Irish Timesthis morning and asked what was really happening in taxation. Suddenly, in the past few days it has discovered €800 million. It keeps discovering money. A sum of €800 million will come in in corporation tax from multinationals totally and utterly unexpectedly and the Government maintains that it is not a once-off. It seems that it might be. I refer the Minister of State to an article in The Irish Timestoday. It states there is speculation in financial circles in Dublin that the increase in corporation tax payments - a windfall that has just arrived which could be spent on social welfare payments certainly - follows moves by a large US multinational to book certain profits in its Irish division that had previously been booked offshore. The multinationals simply pick their profit figures nowadays. They decide what their profits will be. The Minister will know this, as will others on the Government side of the House. For some reason, the Government refuses to acknowledge the fact that multinationals which we welcome, cherish and nurture are playing ducks and drakes with the economy and the budget. If it wants to broaden the tax base, the thing it ought to do is have a reasonable relationship and come to a reasonable arrangement with multinationals.

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