Sir, - The rhetorical tour de force in the Minister for Finance, Mr Quinn's preamble ("We have all been young and we are all getting older") sets the level of innovation for the rest of his Budget speech. It is comforting to be reassured that there are more people at work than has been the case since the 1930s, which should put those whining about high levels of unemployment in their place.
Comforting, too, is the realisation that Exchequer pay and pensions is to be subsidised by a further £249 million (to an estimated total of nearly £75 billion) for the coming year. We are also impressed by the thoughtful provision of tax relief to the tune of £1 million to the mining industry, to help them fulfill their (legal) obligation to return mines to their greenfield state. Who ever said this was a dangerously radical government?
A radical government might have done something like drastically overhauling the social welfare system, with its assumption that employment is the only acceptable kind of work - an assumption that overlooks the economic contribution of childrearers in the home. (An unconditional guaranteed basic income without means testing or work requirement, did, indeed, comprise part of the radical vision of Democratic Left, before the stress of office apparently banished such Utopian views from their agenda.) Increasing the levels of child benefit may make it more attractive for poor people to have large families, but it will do little to ease the burden of the current welfare system - a system which pays people too little to live on, on condition that they don't earn any more, in order to show they are available for jobs that (because of the way the system is financed) don't exist.
In terms of any real casing of the bureaucratic burden imposed by the welfare system on a large section of the population, the proposed changes to the Family Income Supplement, Child Dependant Allowances and the Back to Work Allowance Scheme might be compared to siphoning off the water from the canal with a straw rather than opening the lock. But then, the unemployed aren't part of the cosy "social partnership" are they?
Finally, the removal of poverty traps and means testing would among other things, ensure that people living in rural areas did not feel they had to hoard money - at home to protect it from the prying eyes of the State - thus placing themselves in increased danger of physical attack. (We might even save some money on tax relief for alarms.) - Yours, etc.,
Spokesperson,
Green Party
Upper Fownes Street,
Dublin 2.