Social Justice Ireland conference hears call for tax hikes to fund public services

Ireland should raise its tax take to 34.9 per cent, said Fr Seán Healy at Social Justice Ireland's policy conference yesterday in Dublin.

That would still keep the State a low-tax country by Eurostat standards and below the 2011 EU average of 35.7 per cent, he said.

Fr Healy is chief executive officer of the think tank and advocacy organisation. He was speaking at the 27th annual Social Justice Ireland conference, titled “Planning and Delivering a Fairer Future: Values, Democracy and Service Provision” at the Croke Park conference centre.

Social Justice Ireland recommended increasing the State’s total tax take, the sum of current taxes, social insurance fund income, and charges by local governments, while maintaining Ireland’s position as a low-tax country.

Fr Healy talked of the responsibility of providing public services and infrastructure emphasising key areas for policy development the Government should address.“Take the area of social housing – there are 90,000 households, not individuals – on waiting lists. There is nothing being planned that’s remotely close to the scale that’s required to meet that need.”

One way to raise tax take was to have a minimum effective corporate tax rate of 6 per cent, he said. The current corporate tax rate was 12.5 per cent, he said, but there were many tax breaks. “If that were in place we’d have a much higher level of tax from that source,” he said, “and the corporate sector would be making a fairer contribution.”

Fr Healy said the reason they should be paying more is they get huge State support but when they make huge profits, very little goes back to the State in tax. On negative reaction to increased taxation, he said, “you can’t have Continental Europe-level of services with an American level of taxation”.

Wasteful spending

In his address on public capital investment and public-private partnerships (PPP), Dr

Eoin Reeves

, senior lecturer in economics at the

University of Limerick

, said there was ample evidence of wasteful spending on projects that would not have gained approval if they had been subject to proper appraisal.

“A well-resourced and independent review of Ireland’s public-private partnership experience is long overdue,” he said, adding that PPPs were “notorious for being opaque with their information”.