CORI REACTION:THE GOVERNMENT has been accused of targeting children and other vulnerable groups in the Budget, rather than the banks and others responsible for causing the current crisis.
In its critique of the Budget, social campaigning group Cori Justice said it lacked a guiding vision and showed a “profound lack of understanding” of the social crisis.
“The Budget allows many of those who created the present series of crises, particularly the banks, to escape,” said Fr Seán Healy, director of Cori Justice.
“At the same time, the vulnerable, particularly children, are targeted to pay for the misbehaviour and fraud of others.”
Fr Healy said while the Government had identified unemployment as a critical issue, there were many others concerning children, the elderly, people with disabilities and those who were ill – “all of whom have seen their services reduced over the past year”.
Cori praised the Government’s “sensible” decision to change its borrowing parameters and said it had taken positive steps towards building a fairer tax system.
But it said more than 30 per cent of households at risk of poverty were headed by a person with a job. “Consequently, we urge Government that as resources become available, it should restore the policy of keeping the minimum wage outside the tax net.”
Cori also criticised what it said was a lack of transparency about the social housing budget, but said it appeared there would be a “substantial reduction” in capital expenditure. “This would be a very retrograde step,” it added.
Cori was critical of the decision to establish a new agency to take over toxic debt from the banks. This meant that banks would now be “free to continue as before”.
“On the other hand, the taxpayer will underpin a new National Asset Management Agency which will take on assets potentially as high as €90 billion but which will be ‘transferred at an appropriate discount’ which has not been decided.”
The group said the Budget’s treatment of the banks was in “stark contrast” with its measures affecting children. The abolition of the early childcare supplement and the proposal to tax or means test child benefit from next year would see supports for children reduced at a time when incomes were under serious threat.
Housing charity Threshold has said poorer, more vulnerable tenants have been put at an increased risk of homelessness by the changes in rent supplement payments. Welfare recipients and people on low incomes in receipt of rent supplement, will now pay a minimum contribution of €24 a week, up from €18 in last October’s budget.
The maximum rent to which rent supplement applies will be reduced by up to 10 per cent and the rent supplement payments to tenants will be cut by 8 per cent.