In the last budget, according to the Combat Poverty Agency, 60% of the cash transfers between tax and social welfare went to the top 30% of income earners. Therefore, it comes as no surprise to discover that relative income poverty, the proportion of our population who have incomes below 60% of the average income, has not changed significantly in spite of the fact we have gone from being perhaps the eighteenth richest country in the world to perhaps the second or third richest. If one comes from the technocratic school of economics, then that does not matter. One may well have a flicker of a tear in the corner of one's eye for the 3% who must buy second-hand clothes but one does not really care about inequality.