Budget targeted low to middle-income people – McDonald

THE Budget didn’t tackle job creation but rather targeted low and middle-income people particularly in rural areas, according to Sinn Féin Deputy Mary Lou McDonald.

Speaking to The Clare Champion, Deputy McDonald accused the Government of targeting low and middle-income people and those with disabilities in the 2012 Budget. She said that prior to the General Election, Fine Gael and Labour had promised to find “a fairer way to get the economy back on track”.
“The big irony in all this is that having spent the last number of years railing against Fianna Fáil, they have produced what is a Fianna Fáil budget and that is such a tragedy and it is a huge mistake and a huge missed opportunity,” she commented.
Deputy McDonald said Clare’s Government TDs were not serving the electorate well by endorsing the cuts and tax hikes outlined in the Budget.
“The political reality is that the Government has a huge majority so in real political terms, they can get the Budget through. It doesn’t mean it is the right budget. It doesn’t mean it is a defensible budget but you will find the TDs from Clare because they are Government TDs, will simply walk through the lobby and vote for the budget out of a sense of loyalty to the Government rather than to the people that they represent.”
While Deputy McDonald is heavily critical of the cuts introduced in the Budget, she acknowledges that savings must be made.
“What we wanted was a budget explicitly and unapologetically aimed at protecting the incomes of people on middle and low incomes and protecting their standard of living and their spending power. You see it everywhere, all over Clare, grocers, butchers, hairdressers, all closed because people’s spending power has been so badly damaged and we need to fix that if we are going to keep people in the jobs they have and get more people back to work. That is why we argued with the Government that what they should do is close a whole load of tax loop holes and legacy tax breaks for developers and introduce a modest but valuable tax on huge levels of wealth and introduce a new tax band for very high earners. We thought that was the way to go rather than cutting the services or introducing household charges or septic tank charges on people who were already spending what they have. All you do when you do this is put people into debt.”
Sinn Féin, Deputy McDonald claims, would have done things differently.
“I think if you follow the sequence of things, the Government cut their capital investment programme by €760 million. That was a big mistake. What they should have done was supplement their investment stream using the national pension reserve fund because it is there, it is a sovereign wealth fund, and the idea of these type of funds is that you invest them in the country,” she said.
“When you boil it all down, people are concerned that they cannot manage on their current income levels, with big mortgages, maybe in negative equity, maybe struggling with fuel and electricity bills and so on and that is the current problem for a lot of people. The second problem is that when they look a bit further down the road, they don’t see any prospect of improvement, of jobs coming on line, of money circulating in the economy,” Deputy McDonald continued.
The Dublin-based TD said that while the Budget was hard on all those on low wages or social welfare, it would have a particularly devastating impact on rural families.
“I am sure that in Clare, people can see the effects of emigration again and people just going to Australia, New Zealand, going to Canada, going anywhere they have a chance to get any kind of work. That has had an effect in the cities but the effect of that on rural Ireland is really, really cruel and maybe more visible than in the urban centres. I think things like the doubling of the school transport costs will have serious implications for people in rural Ireland, the ongoing decision to close garda stations is clearly going to affect rural Ireland. Things like the carbon tax, a carbon tax ought to be a positive environmentally friendly thing but considering the hike in costs for diesel and petrol, it isn’t in this case. It will have a big effect for people in rural Ireland because the same public transport infrastructure is not in place for people there. I think this Budget is going to hurt ordinary working people or people who are out of work across the board but there will be particular consequences for rural Ireland,” Deputy McDonald commented.
Sinn Féin’s deputy leader also urged people to “kick up a fuss about these things”.
“I think people should be pressurising their local TDs , their Government TDs and holding them to account because those that represent Clare in the Dáil are accountable to the people there and I think they have to be held to account. The message for all of us is that we can’t lie down under bad policy,” Deputy McDonald concluded.