Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this afternoon's debate and I will try to be brief with my comments. I have a great deal to get through. Speaking about recovery would seem like crazy talk to many people, given the struggle everyday life remains for working families, those looking for a job or those who may be caring for others, as was discussed earlier. We in Sinn Féin are under no illusion: recovery is not being felt by everyone and it is limited to certain people in certain sectors in certain regions. It is time for a fair recovery and I hope the 2016 budget will achieve that. Tackling inequality is not just about simple measures of taking from the rich to give to the poor. Economic inequality can only be reduced if policy is joining up the dots between taxes, public services, jobs, wages and the cost of living. I will take this opportunity to touch on some of those issues in the limited time I have. In the next few weeks we will be able to reflect on this when the budget is presented in the Dáil.

We all agree that more quality jobs are a key antidote to poverty and low incomes. A Eurofound document released earlier this year, the European Jobs Monitor report 2015, found that the increase in jobs in seven countries studied, including Ireland, is in "a transition from the more polarised employment shifts of the peak recession years to a flatter, more equal distribution of employment across the wage distribution, with, if anything, a downward skew – in other words, greater growth in lower-paid employment". From this, it notes that there may be increases in low-productivity employment, but this means in turn that output does not rise. Therefore, in spite of the increase in jobs, living standards no longer rise. It goes on to find that the jobs growth of the past three years has been asymmetrically polarised, with the greatest growth in well-paid jobs, modest growth in low-paid jobs and declining employment in jobs in the middle of the wage distribution. The OECD has said the fostering of better jobs for a larger proportion of the workforce will be key to reducing inequality and this must be a priority.

Some reference has been made to progressive taxation systems and progressive income tax systems. There has been some dispute about this, specifically about what constitutes a tax system. It goes beyond just looking at income tax and must incorporate corporate, capital, income, property, wealth, value added and other taxes. Fintan O'Toole discussed this in The Irish Timesyesterday. He argues that the claim that we have the most progressive tax system depends on ignoring the highly regressive nature of indirect taxes, which leads me to my next issue.

It will not come as a surprise to the Minister of State or to anyone else here that one of the things we would like to happen in the budget is a commitment to abolish domestic water charges.