Sir, – Your front-page photograph (Gareth Chaney, “Surplus with a smile”, January 5th) shows both the Minister for Public Expenditure and the Minister for Finance looking very contented having confirmed an exchequer surplus in State finances of €5 billion for last year.
And yet this same State cannot provide a home for all its citizens, is inept with regard to meeting their health and medical needs and is severely stressed in adequately educating them.
Until the disconnect of a wealthy country being unable to meet the most basic needs of its citizens is fully comprehended and uniformly confronted, our Government Ministers do not have anything to smile about. And those outside of Government should be very careful of a similar countenance that playing politics with these vulnerabilities of our citizens may induce. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL GANNON,
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Kilkenny.
Sir , – I am puzzled, if not confused, by the use of the word “windfall” in relation to the surge in corporation tax receipts. By any measure this is an extraordinary percentage increase and we have not as yet received any satisfactory explanation.
The Department of Finance refers to the receipts as a “windfall” and yet proceeds to forecast a broadly similar “windfall” figure for the next four years! Another august body, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council on the other hand uses the word “temporary” .
The use of the term windfall means unexpected or once-off and yet the Department of Finance is expecting it to reoccur now for a minimum of the next four years in a row.
What therefore is the windfall caused by? We can only speculate!
Either an unexpected high level of trading profits, particularly by the multinationals in 2022, which will or will not be repeated for the next four years, or some rerouting of profits into the Irish subsidiaries for tax planning reasons. – Yours, etc,
PETER DALY,
Sandymount,
Dublin 4.
