|
Cóir Date: 08.12.2010 As Irish taxpayers endure the toughest budget in living memory, Cóir has said that EU and IMF takeover has meant that families and vulnerable citizens have become the immediate targets of cuts and taxes scheduled for 2011.
Maria Mhic Meanmain of Cóir said that cuts to child benefit and moves to push mothers into the workforce were disproportionately affecting families who were already paying through the nose for providing a full-time parent to their children. She added that the Budget was penalising larger families in particular - for example by slashing €10 and €20 per month from the first and second child in a family in receipt of child benefit but taking €20 from the third or subsequent child. "At a time when we need to build families for growth the government is making it very hard for people to have children," said the Cóir spokeswoman. "And we're promised a whole range of carbon taxes and water charges - which again hit larger families the hardest."
"Previously the Irish government, at the behest of the EU, introduced tax individualisation which forces families with a full-time mother (or father) to pay up to a whopping €7000 in additional taxes. Families with a single income also face a higher threshold when claiming medical benefits. Now - and again at the behest of the EU and the IMF - things are being made even harder for traditional families," said Ms Mhic Meanmain.
The EU/IMF plan specified that new tax measures would hit married one-income families hardest, going so far as to ensure that the additional tax paid by such families in the Budget would be even greater than the additional tax paid by a single person.
The government were happy to do as they were told. Budget 2011 cuts the take-home pay of a married one-income family on €50,000 by €1,071 while a single person on the same wage sees take home pay reduced by €885 - a difference of almost €200 in favour of the single taxpayer.
Ms Mhic Meanmain said that the changes was not only unfair and punitive to families, they was clearly unconstitutional since the Irish Constitution gave special recognition to the work done by the mother at home and ordered the state to endeavour to ensure that mothers would not be forced out to work.
"Clearly, the EU and the IMF couldn't care less for the Irish Constitution or for what the Irish people might actually want," she said. "And since our government handed over our Constitution in the Lisbon Treaty, they're not in a position to object."
Ajal Chopra, the man leading the IMF team in Ireland, has recommended that the Irish government give women with small children a five per cent tax credit to encourage them back into the workforce - a measure Ms Mhic Meanmain described as both discriminatory and pointless, since the rate of unemployment in Ireland had doubled in just 24 months.
Professor Ray Kinsella, an expert in banking and financial services at the University College Dublin Graduate School said that the Budget would "vandalise the economy" and that to rebuild the economy "families - who provide the future - needed to be supported". Cóir said that in order to get the country back on track, the government should default on the debt and tell the EU/IMF team to go home. "This dent - up to €100 billion - is not a debt incurred by the Irish people. It's the cost of bailing out the greedy reckless French and German banks who lent billions to the greedy, reckless Irish banks. We should default and start to build our economy again - and tell the EU and IMF to lay off our families," said Ms Mhic Meanmain.
|
Comments