Honestly the horror stories and scaremongering that is out there in the media concerning our current financial situation, woes and future is the equivalent of Nightmare on Erin Street with horror sequels to return and return. What is the scariest of all is the lack of voices standing up against cuts to social welfare and child benefit. Surely to God if things are so bad.........which I don't doubt for a second they are.....the first thing you do is protect the vulnerable, not target them.
Why do the people who make the mistakes get away? Why do we let the government protect the golden circles with golden parachutes and golden handshakes and put the burden back on the families. Why can this government and its advisors make emergency concessions for bankers going bust but yet the spectre of homelessness and joblessness is more of a real threat to those of us living in the real world.
35,000 homes on the verge of repossession in Ireland and we are giving "emergency cushions" to banks? That's 35,000 families. That's me and you - real people. We are able to save Zombie banks with toxic loans and we can't save our own people.
It's easy to doctor statistics and drop hellish figures to scare us into submission. The figures that should really worry this government is 1 in 9 children in Ireland are living in poverty, and that figure is set to grow.
5 ~ Comment(s) so far ...:
IrishMammy, I understand your frustration and that you think the Government is targeting the vulnerable, but given the way the unions are behaving re pay cuts and job cuts in the public sector, is it any wonder that they have picked easy targets? I am more angry with unions than I am with the Government, the unions are living in fantasy land with their beliefs that no job cuts or pay cuts are necessary. Meanwhile the country is falling deeper into debt. I really hope the Government takes the axe to the public sector pay packet and makes some job cuts, the brave decisions that need to be made rather than picking on social welfare payments. Then again, our social welfare payments are more generous than say, the social welfare payments in the UK, where child benefit is 20 pounds a week for the eldest child and 13.20 for each additional child. :-)
Hi Bluire
Sorry took me a while to get some time to get back to the blog. I have to say I disagree with you regarding the "generosity" of our payments.
I attach a link here which compares child benefit packages in 22 countries. The key data is summarised at the start, pages 1 to 13. The conclusion on page 13 is also key, it puts the countries into 4 groups ranked in decending order (Leaders, 2nd, 3rd, Laggards). Ireland is in the 3rd group, so Ireland is NOT one of the best places for child benefit overall, it is not, it is lagging behind the average. Main reason is high cost of rearing children and dearth of services for children.
Additionally an OECD report singled out Ireland as having one of the lowest spendings on under 6's in the developed world. That report was Sept that is before the ECS is removed and child benefit is slashed.
Additionally 90% of funding ear marked for community creches has been withdrawn.
You can't compare us to the UK where every child is entitled to free education, free school books, free NHS and in Scandinavia where my husband is from the creche costs 150 Euros per child per month (and less if you have more children). I mean the whole situation is ridiculous. I think the government have choices, and I am in danger of making this reply very long but they include - FG have yesterday put forward an introduction of a carbon tax and a windfall levy on power generators which combined could raise up to €700 million per year.
Additionally -
• There are over 100 tax shelters that are hiding (as highlighted by the commission on taxation)
• There is over 80 billion in savings accounts in Ireland – property boom windfalls? What about a tax on worldwide income for billions stashed away in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland and The Hague.
• We talk of our Irish Disapora, if they want to remain Irish citizens - while living abroad, like US citizens they can pay a small percentage of tax back to the mother land otherwise they lose their Irish passport.
• Lots of scaremongering about raising corporate tax but really would the multinationals run for the hills with a small 0.5% increase in the corporate tax rate, known as one of the lowest in the world?
• Suspend the E1.6 billion payment into the national pension reserve fund (as recommended by An Bord Snip Nua), which is being saved for a rainy day – Minister we are in a monsoon !!
And although the list above is not exhaustive, it is to show you there is money out there and where there is a will and courage to change the course of future generations - there is a way.
Here's another one to make you pull your hair out:
• 1 million is spent per year for Gardai to drive around ex –Taoisigh
Now I don't accept the argument there's isn't other ways than picking up on the vulnerable such as the pensioners and the children, just to please a few property developers and high earning bank officials.
Opps sorry forgot the link mentioned above here it is:-
http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rrep174.pdf
But Irish Mammy, you missed my point. The Government are picking on vulnerable targets like social welfare payments BECAUSE they are afraid to make cuts in the public sector pay packet and/or numbers.
The schools might be free in the UK, but if you lived there, would you send your child to a state school? It is often impossible to get your child into a state shool in the area you live in.
As for the 80 billion in savings, I have savings and I saved my money after it was taxed, and like millions of others, I pay DIRT on my savings, I hope you are not suggesting that people's hard earned cash (mine included) that I choose to save rather than squander should be further taxed to fund child benefit?
Roughly a third of our budget goes on social welfare spending.
Roughly a third of our budget goes on public sector wage bill.
Roughly a third goes on keeping the country going, health, education, services etc.
Maybe if two thirds went on keeping the country going and one third went on social welfare payments and the public sector pay bill combined then we could have creche fees for 150 euro a month like in Sweden and free school books like in the UK, but frankly, it's cheaper to buy school books in Ireland and send your children to a nice local state primary school than it is to send them to private school in the UK because the public school system is perceived to be failing UK residents and that is widely written about in the UK media.
I'm not putting you into this category, but the Unions are living in cloud cuckoo land re pay cuts. Public sector pay and social welfare payments were raised in an era of a booming economy and high inflation. We are now in an era of recessionary deflation but no one wants to take a cut in anything, even though the lowered cost of living has made people better off. Social welfare payments are also extremely high, take unemployment benefit versus UK job seekers allowance. They days of having our cake and eating it are gone. There have to be cuts.
We could follow what Sweden did when they last had an economic crisis, cut 10% across the board, everything gets affected, a brave decision, but an equitable one. Your solution to child benefit is more tax, but, everyone in this country I believe has a moral obligation to accept a lower wage to make Ireland competitive again and if workers are accepting lower wages, then people on social welfare benefits of one description or another will have to accept reductions in child benefit.
Playing devil's advocate here, why should the government continue to pay people who choose to have children benefits that the childless don't get. When you make a decision to have a child you work out is it actually affordable beforehand, and you don't necessarily budget what your social welfare payment will be into that. The creche fees in Ireland are well known to all who choose to have children here.
I'm sorry, but there have to be cuts in everything. If there aren't cuts, your children will be the ones paying off our monstrous debt in twenty years time, unless they are living in Sweden, in which case, they will be paying around 40% tax, rather than an average of 27 to 30% in Ireland.
As for the diaspora and taxing them, tell that to the young college graduates forced to emmigrate again, I am sure they will happily surrender their passports. (I'm not trying to offend, but that is one of the more unjust ideas I have heard, tax economic refugees? ).
Hi Bluire
Thanks for reading you make some really excellent points, ones that I intend to answer in the form of a post as the comment would be too long. Just to point out I should have clarified some of my ideas and you are right to pull me up on them. I will clarify in the post just one point I had to investigate regarding UK schools and having never lived there I asked a friend what was her experience and she said “Many state schools in the UK are excellent, all the articles in the papers are about people living in cities, especially London, where the local state schools do not have good reputations - obviously it is an issue that particularly affects many journalists on national newspapers! My experience of state schools in UK is that they are good! The school my children would have gone to if we had not have moved was excellent and much better than a private school - and free!”
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