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28 October 2010

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Budget 2011: There is a Better Way

BY ROBBIE SMYTH

“NOT FAIR, rational or right” is how Sinn Féin’s Leinster House team sum up the ‘out of their depth’ Fianna Fáil/Green Party Coalition Budget plans.
The party will launch a wide-ranging Budget submission in November, maintaining a tradition of offering a republican alternative begun when Caoimhghín Ó Caolain was elected a TD in 1997 and now copied by other Opposition parties.
The Sinn Féin submission for 2011 has two key themes, both captured in the title There is a Better Way – Sinn Féin’s Economic Plan for Recovery.
Sinn Féin’s recovery plan rests on three key pillars.
1. New revenue-raising and tax reform proposals;
2. Public spending savings;
3. And a multi-billion-euro stimulus package.
In the context of revenue-raising and tax reform, Sinn Féin has taken an entirely different route to the Establishment political parties.
The first key difference is that the Sinn Féin plans are fair and rooted in equality of treatment. They develop a theme emphasised by the party for many decades. It is that the high-income earners do not pay a fair share of taxation.
One of the key similarities between Fianna Fáil, the Greens, Fine Gael and Labour is a resistance to demolish the buttress of unjustified reliefs and exemptions constructed over decades of election vote-buying exercises.
The resistance to tax justice for these parties is matched with an insatiable desire to tax the lowest economically marginalised and middle-income earners, the very people whose ever-diminishing disposable income is one of the few economic drivers left in the domestic economy.
With 14 separate proposals Sinn Féin has, using Department of Finance projections, found simple, fair ways to raise over €4billion.
On the question of public sector spending, Sinn Féin’s Finance spokesperson Arthur Morgan TD has highlighted the party’s proposals to cap ministerial salaries at €100,000, reducing TDs’ annual wages to €75,000 and senators to €60,000.
These proposals are just a small part of a strategy to cut needless costs and drive efficiency in the public sector, ranging from ending the private hospital co-location scheme to introducing properly-vouched expenses for public representatives and senior civil servants. Sinn Féin believes that savings of €1.188billion can be made annually.
Tax reform and public sector efficiencies are just one part of the Sinn Féin strategy for recovery. Within days of the original bank bail-out at the end of September 2008, the party had moved to create a team working on a new economic development strategy for the 26-County economy. Getting Ireland ‘Back to Work’ is the result of this discussion that involved public representatives and party activists from across the island.
The Sinn Féin Budget submission for 2011 summarises some of the more detailed proposals in the ‘Back to Work’ document. It sets out Sinn Féin’s stall for an economic stimulus package when it says:
“The relationship between jobs and the deficit is a clear one, more people in work produces higher levels of spending activity and tax revenues, as well as lower welfare payments.”
Sinn Féin proposes a €7.595 billion employment and financial stimulus package. It is an attempt to create a positive multiplier effect in the economy which, according to Economic Social Research Institute (ESRI) figures, would increase real GDP growth by 1.8% annually.
More critically, it is a strategy rooted in developing Irish business, research and investment rather than the Establishment party strategy of waiting for an international economy rebound which they hope will drive Irish exports.
Sinn Féin’s proposals are in stark contrast to the Coalition approach of a scorched earth cutback policy, a strategy supported by Fine Gael. We don’t really know what the Labour Party think as they are still playing the coy debutante for prospective coalition partners.
The heart of the Sinn Féin position is that:
“In a time of economic difficulty there is a moral obligation to protect those most in need [and] the Government must be accountable for its actions.”
Sinn Féin believes that Ireland needs “new thinking” and “We are facing challenges unlike any faced before.”
The party proposes “an honest debate about what we stand for as a people and what kind of country we want for our children”. Right now, Sinn Féin is the only party in Ireland actively taking up this challenge.

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Contributions from key figures in the churches, academia and wider civic society as well as senior republican figures

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