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

The Minister is rewriting history in terms of the rationale for the USC. It was not put forward on the basis of broadening tax bases or anything like that. It was put forward as an emergency tax in response to a crisis created by banks and developers and it was imposed on top of the income tax that workers paid. If you earn €45,000 per year, you pay €2,300 on top of your income tax. If you €70,000, you pay €4,300 on top of your income tax. Due to the cost-of-living crisis, workers have lost €2,000 to €4,000, depending their mortgage situations and so on. People are being hammered at the moment and they need a break.

Here is the irony and contradiction. While ordinary workers are losing out because of the USC, net household wealth has increased dramatically. There is a group of people who are winning in the current crisis, but it is always the ordinary worker who has to pick up the tab. Why does the State not pay for the abolition of the USC by imposing higher taxes on the very wealthy, as we have proposed? This would cover the cost of getting rid of what is an unfair austerity tax, one that was supposed to be a temporary emergency tax.

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