Group blames 'deeply faulty' social analysis for country's woes

SOCIAL JUSTICE IRELAND:FAULTY SOCIAL analysis has brought Ireland on an unsustainable journey marked by greed and anxiety, the Social Justice Ireland organisation has warned.

In its general election briefing paper, the group says such policies have brought Ireland to its current crisis, and the dominant policy narrative continues to be “deeply flawed”. At its heart this narrative has maintained that economic growth for its own sake was the most important aim “and the higher the rate of economic growth the better”.

Fr Seán Healy, director of Social Justice Ireland, acknowledges Ireland must pay its way and the State’s finances must be brought into balance. “But this will not happen under the current terms of the EU-IMF bailout.”

He also argues Ireland’s total tax-take (ie all taxes, charges and social insurance payments) must increase while keeping Ireland a low-tax country.

“However this increase must be achieved by broadening the tax base and making the tax system fairer by, for example, removing many tax breaks that benefit only the better off.”

Other “false assumptions” that Fr Healy points to include:

* the benefits of economic growth would trickle down automatically;

* infrastructure and socials services at an average EU level could be delivered with one of the lowest total tax-takes in Europe;

* growing inequality and the widening gaps between rich and poor were not important, and,

* that “giving people back their own money” through tax reduction was better that investing money in developing and improving infrastructure and services.

These assumptions gave rise to a litany of policy failures, says the briefing.

All this has created a situation where the Government’s expenditure as a percentage of GDP is as almost as low as Estonia’s, Lithuania’s and Slovakia’s; where Ireland’s social services have been developed on a two-tier basis with badly funded public health care alongside private hospitals and where 14.1 per cent of Ireland’s population live in poverty – ie on an income less than €11,585 per year (€222.18 per week) for a single person or €26,877 (€515.46 per week) for a household of four.