Sir, – Noel Whelan is of the view that child benefit payments to so-called high earners "waste resources" ("Child benefit reforms must be considered", Opinion & Analysis, June 8th).
High earners earn their salaries through hard work, commitment, education and long hours, and make great personal sacrifices along the way to do so. They already pay upwards of 50 per cent tax on their salaries to maintain an inefficient public sector, as well as lavish social welfare payments.
Let’s not compound the insult by begrudging them the modest child benefit they do receive or commenting on how they might choose to use it.
To remove the payment would represent a further diminution of the social contract with the Government. This contract has been continually eroded through a range of new taxes, charges, tolls and not-so-voluntary contributions which need to be forked out by those workers for a range of purportedly “free” public services including health, education and transportation.
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The well of taxpayer cash – not to mention goodwill – has already been bled dry. Enough is enough. – Yours, etc,
GERARD REYNOLDS,
Churchtown, Dublin 14.
Sir, – In making the case for reform of child benefit, Noel Whelan states there has been a dramatic increase in the rate of the payment in recent years.
In fact, the trend has been quite the opposite, with cumulative cuts amounting to a 15 per cent decrease in the amount families receive since 2009.
Ireland has long lagged far behind its EU peers in terms of investment in early years care and education.
There are varying ways of quantifying State spending on the early years; but even in the very best-case scenario, we spend just half the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recommended norm.
This underinvestment is passed on to Irish parents who pay among the highest fees in Europe.
Why then when it comes to providing long overdue quality, sustainable early years care and education is there an automatic call from certain sectors to take something away from children in order to pay for it?
In the recently published National Development Plan less than half a per cent is allocated towards children’s early care and education.
Is there no more room available in a €116 billion budget for children than that? – Yours, etc,
JUNE TINSLEY,
Head of Advocacy,
RACHEL BOYCE,
Communications Manager,
Barnardos,
Christchurch Square,
Dublin 8.