ULA attacks 'lemming' Noonan

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has been accused of acting like a “lemming, charging towards the cliff and disaster” at the launch of the United Left Alliance (ULA) pre-budget statement.

People Before Profit Alliance TD Richard Boyd-Barrett said the latest ESRI growth projections for next year provided the latest official confirmation that austerity was not working.

"There is an alternative. There is in fact a pot of gold. The super-wealthy are obscenely wealthy and they have been getting richer during the course of the crisis when everybody else is being slaughtered with austerity, cutbacks and the other effects of the recession," he said.

"Michael Noonan seems to be engaged in what you could only describe as the political economy of the lemming, charging towards the cliff and disaster, even though all the evidence shows that it doesn't work."

Mr Boyd-Barrett said €220 billion was in the hands of the top 5 per cent of the population. The ULA was proposing to the imposition of a "wealth tax" that would raise €10 billion. The group has also called for a register of assets to be compiled by Government immediately.

Socialist Party deputy Joe Higgins said the "cynicism" that accompanied the pre-Budget period was "sickening".

Mr Higgins said the "European establishment" was giving "patronising pats on the head" to the Government "for essentially saving their system from crisis on the backs of Irish taxpayers".

He said wealth still existed in Ireland. "The wealth is there but it's a political choice not to tax that wealth at realistic levels." The money could be invested in emergency job creation, and infrastructural projects.

People Before Profit's Joan Collins said the policy of austerity was not working. "There is no need for austerity and we are putting forward a more positive angle," she said.