`The triumph of greed over need'

The Conference of Religious of Ireland has dismissed the Budget as "the triumph of greed over need". Father Sean Healy of CORI's Justice Commission said it was the worst budget since the conference started its critiques 12 years ago.

"No Minister for Finance has ever had such an opportunity to tackle poverty, unemployment, and exclusion, and no Minister for Finance has ever so deepened the divisions in Irish society in a single budget," he said.

The Budget had consciously redistributed the benefits of economic growth to the better-off and had failed to meet the Partnership 2000 commitments on social exclusion. It was an insult to the decency of Irish people. "Frankly, it is an incredible budget given the possibilities that were available to the Minister for Finance. It was an opportunity squandered," he said.

"Images of rising tides and calm canals are no substitute for concrete policies to ensure all are included," he added.

Criticising the Department of Finance, Father Healy called for the introduction of "an independent ongoing monitoring of the numbers produced in the budget process every year". He said that since 1991 Exchequer returns had exceeded targets announced in the budget. The scale and recurring nature of the underestimation raised serious questions while documentation produced by the Department outlining details of this year's Budget left a good deal to be desired.

He welcomed those provisions in the Budget relevant to the family income supplement, as well as its efforts to secure work for the long-term unemployed, the focus on old people and its healthcare package. But it had more in common with Thatcherite Britain in the mid-1980s than with any commitment to tackle social exclusion, he said.

The tax cuts, he pointed out, were of no benefit to the 40 per cent of Ireland's population, whose incomes were below or at marginal tax levels.

There are now more people in Ireland with incomes below the poverty line than was the case 10 years ago, and what relief of poverty there has been was at the expense of the "less poor". In real terms unemployment fell by just 12,000 last year, while there were now 3,000 more people out of work here than was the case in 1990, he said.

In that context, and with the resources available for this year's budget, the Government "could and should have moved decisively towards implementing the 10-sector plan proposed by CORI's Justice Commission". This would include the introduction of a basic income for all, to ensure no one would have to live below the poverty line.

Proposed major tax reform would ensure a widening of the tax base and the elimination of poverty traps. While a employment initiative, aimed specifically at the long-term unemployed, would create 25,000 "rate-for-the-job" posts.

"There is a real danger," Father Healy said,"that the plight of large numbers of people excluded from the benefits of the Celtic Tiger economy will be ignored." Irish society needs a radical approach, he said, to ensure the inclusion of all Irish people in the benefits of present economic growth.