The Budget was described as a shocking assault on the poor and vulnerable, an alliance of independent councillors, community activists and environmentalists said today.
Richard Boyd Barrett of the People Before Profit Alliance, along with former Green Party councillors Chris O’Leary and Bronwyn Maher, said they were coming together to offer people a political alternative to the main opposition parties.
They called for the banks to be nationalised and for a public works programme to be started based on direct labour units organised by the Government or local authorities. Direct labour units would, according to the alliance, cut out the extra costs accrued by Public Private Partnership Schemes or the cost overruns practised by private construction companies.
Mr Boyd Barrett said the Budget had robbed the PAYE worker to bail out the banks.
“This is a budget about robbing working people, the young and the vulnerable to bail out the banks and wealthy people who ran the economy into the ground. The non- wealthy are being asked to pay. The pain is not being shared fairly. That is false,” he said.
“The bulk of the increase in taxation – 81 per cent - is to be paid for by the PAYE worker. No action was taken against the tax exiles. Dennis O’Brien will sleep soundly. His income won’t be touched.”
Independent Cork councillor Chris O’Leary said he had left the Green Party because he could no longer be “two-faced” and be part of a party who “takes away the rights of ordinary people.”
He accused the Government of being ageist saying that halving the jobseeker’s allowance for those under 20 was “taking away the right of the under 20s to be independent.”
He described the plan to provide a year’s free preschool to all three- to four-year-old children in place of the early childcare supplement as “ill thought out” with the details had having been worked out properly.
“The Government is too slow to respond. They’re like headless chickens. It’s taken them 8 months to realise that they had to do something. Banks should be nationalised and possession taken of empty housing units to clear housing lists. There are 7500 people on the housing list in Cork alone,” he said.
Pat Dunne of the People Before Profit Alliance said there was a “disconnect” between the political parties and ordinary people.
“The Budget was an attack on ordinary people. There are waiting lists of three months to receive social welfare. People are being asked to wait for three months with no money,” he said.
The alliance will publish an alternative economic agenda on April 22nd.