In a statement today (22nd December), People Before Profit/ULA councillors, Melisa Halpin and Hugh Lewis condemned Labour and Fine Gael for supporting the council budget that incorporates the Household Charge and is a continuation of the government’s policies of cutbacks and flat rate taxes that will disproportionately affect the poor, the homeless, the disabled and the vulnerable.
Cllr Melisa Halpin
The budget includes a minimum cut of 9% (€2.6 million) from the Department of Local Government, but it was confirmed at the meeting last night that this funding is reliant on the Department collecting millions of euro in the Household Charge. This reduction in the Local Government Fund means that in every department in the council there are severe cutbacks to spending.
Councils across the country should be fighting these cuts that will have a severe impact on frontline services. Councillors should also ensure that the people who can least afford it will not be made to pay the most. Instead they have voted for a budget based on collecting €100 from all home owners. This Household Charge is utterly unfair as it transfers the burden of paying for services from central progressive taxes to a flat charge that sees the millionaire pay the same as the pensioner. The budget also includes a flat rate increase to burial charges, a 50% cut to the Social Inclusion budget, cuts to the community grants, cuts to disabled and elderly persons grants for adapting their houses, cuts to library services and cuts to maintaining the water infrastructure, local authority housing and council estates. There is no reduction to commercial rates or parking charges which are putting increasing pressure on smaller businesses and are bad for town centres. Meanwhile, the council will continue to pay €1.9 million to APCOA to operate street parking, without giving any cost benefit analysis of this contract, and has only reduced the fund for councillor’s expenses by €30,000, leaving over €100,000 for junkets.
Cllr Hugh Lewis
Cllrs Melisa Halpin and Hugh Lewis proposed reducing conference expenses to €1000 per councillor and cutting the allowance for chairing the Strategic Policy Committees by 50%. They proposed using the remaining money (€133,600) to offset the cut to the Social Inclusion fund and increase the funds available for disabled and elderly persons grants. The proposal fell to another proposal that accepted the budget and reduced the junket fund by a mere €30,000.
Cllr Melisa Halpin said: “It is hardly surprising that Fine Gael would support this budget but the Labour Party should be ashamed of itself. They have accepted a budget that sees the pensioner who has €219 per week pay the same Household Charge of €100 as the millionaire. They have voted for an array of cuts that will hit the poor, the vulnerable and the disabled. The flat rate increase to burial fees (a plot in Shanganagh goes from €2700 to €2900 and interment fees from €765 to €940) again is a regressive tax that will disproportionately affect the poor. They have voted to cut the Social Inclusion Fund by 50%. Already last year we saw the Festival of World Cultures fall by the way side, now this cut.
Deputy Boyd Barrett who first raised the issue in the Dail last week will visit the picket lines of the EBS workers this morning to show his support for the strikers.
This is a cruel and senseless budget. The government has made a cold calculated decision to attack the poor, the young and the vulnerable in order to protect the bankers and the super-wealthy. It is as simple and obscene as that. It is immoral in the extreme that any government would choose to attack, children, young people, students, lone-parents, the disabled and those dependent on rent allowance. If you were to put together a comprehensive list of the most vulnerable sectors of society in order to attack them, you could do a much nastier job than this. Minister Noonan is making the point that income will remain untouched but outgoings will go through the roof with increases in VAT, motor-tax, carbon tax and the introduction of the house-hold charge. The nasty and aggressive cuts announced yesterday will see numbers of families being plunged into poverty and widespread destruction of our public services. The government’s claims that this is a budget about job creation are scandalous when you examine the amount of jobs that will be lost as a result of this budget.
Hardly a cent has been taken from those who have the real wealth in society. The effect of this policy has been lengthening dole queues and impoverishment with rising inequality in a society that was already deeply unequal. The wealth of the super-rich has increased throughout the crises. Despite promising otherwise the Labour party in government is continuing with the programme of austerity at
Deputy Boyd Barrett said that the Bill, which contains measures to give effect to the recent referendum on judges pay and some other items relating to pay and pensions for top civil servants and politicians, should also have included other measures. The emergency measures Deputy Boyd Barrett will advocate include: an across the board cap of €100,000 on all high earning public servants, politicians and others paid with public funds; €50,000 annual cap on all public sector pensions (including politicians); measures to recover assets transferred by developers to spouses; measures to impose taxes on tax exiles, a super-levy on the assets of the super-wealthy and on corporate profits. Deputy Boyd Barrett said: “Of course, the public voted overwhelmingly to allow for reductions in judges pay but on its own this measure is wholly inadequate and tokenistic. It is a measure designed to look as if the government is responding to public anger about the huge earnings, pensions and assets of the very rich, when in fact there is no serious intent to target those at the top. We need a whole series of emergency measures that seriously tackle the gross income and wealth inequalities that exist in our society, and the grossly unfair way that low and middle income earners are being savaged with austerity to pay off the gambling debts of banks and speculators, while the super-wealthy are left unscathed.
