Shane Ross (Independent)

This is the unacceptable face of capitalism since I guess that sum could pay for all these cuts. It is patently unjust. They can afford to go to court about money which they do not need by employing extremely expensive lawyers while people are suffering serious hardship. This points to the fact that such perfectly legal tax loopholes are socially unacceptable. As long as people with disabilities and health problems are made to suffer, we cannot continue to pursue this policy and claim to be an equitable or fair society.

I will be the first to support cuts in income tax because that is the way in which wealth is created in order that more money can be distributed to the people who deserve it. However, we cannot continue to give extraordinary privileges to a few people while other people are suffering such extraordinary disadvantage.

I agreed with everything Senator Norris said, apart from when he read from The Irish Times. A few days before the newspaper preached so eloquently about the most weak and vulnerable in society, The Irish Times was itself exposed as having paid the most extraordinary amounts of money to people under the guise of being a charitable trust. The Government is playing almost exactly the same game and the Opposition may have done so in the past. It is glaring hypocrisy that the newspaper could issue such an editorial on a Saturday, when one finds the same week that the top executives and directors are being paid huge sums of money – in some cases to ensure they do no work at all. They are not being overworked at the same time.