What price an equal Ireland?

BY ROBBIE SMYTH

So it would cost €5 billion to deliver on Sinn Féin's 2002 Leinster House manifesto proposals on housing, health, education and childcare and service charges. Excellent, it's a bargain.

€5 billion was the cost estimated by economic consultants hired by the Irish Examiner in the latest instalment of an ongoing campaign by the mainstream media and some establishment politicians.

Following in the footsteps of Fianna Fáil ministers such as Willie O'Dea, as well the PD duo of Harney and McDowell, who gave us the excellent term of "balaclava economics" in one of their previous rants, the Examiner took up where Tony O'Reilly's Independent News and Media left off in attempting to deride Sinn Féin and marginalise the party's voters.

The aim seems to be to convince Sinn Féin voters that they were misled or duped by the party. Strange, isn't that what Fianna Fáil actually did in 2002, promising to fix schools, build new roads, hospitals, houses and stadia, only to turn round in the weeks after the June election and tell us all that the coffers were empty?

The twisted logic argues that by supporting Sinn Féin, voters are involved in some doomsday scenario that will culminate in our collective annihilation.

What nonsense. Sinn Féin's manifesto proposals were part of a well thought out analysis about what needs to be done to build an equal Ireland. Many of the proposals have widespread political and social support stretching way beyond the party itself.

For example, the proposal to set a two-year time limit for taking 70% of families off housing waiting lists comes from the National Economic and Social Forum. The childcare proposals were supported by Combat Poverty, among others.

Other proposals can be found in the policies of unions, voluntary groups and NGOs. Are we really to believe that all these groups are wrong, while the establishment media and government create opportunist smokescreens that detract from their failures?

The only valid question is from where would the money come. Here again, it's about taking the choices to build an equal Ireland. Over €1 billion has been collected in tax from DIRT cheats and those holding illegal offshore accounts. There is still a substantial treasure chest in the Central Bank, running to billions, once held as foreign exchange reserves but no longer needed due to euro currency membership. This money could surely be diverted to housing, health and education?

The Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrats Government chose to put €2.5 billion into Special Savings Accounts, rewarding those who could save rather than spend on social services. This money could have been re-allocated but is now committed elsewhere.

It is the same logic that allows the government operate at least 20 different tax relief and allowance schemes without knowing the financial cost to the economy. The money is there; what is absent is the political will to distribute it fairly or efficiently, as the hundreds of millions lost on Luas and the Port Tunnel show a government incredibly bad at spending taxpayers' money.

So for now we will have tax exiles, with loopholes for the very rich, while the low paid are still in the tax net and more PAYE workers than ever before are paying the top 42% rate.

We will also have more scaremongering and lies about Sinn Féin's policies, anything it seems, that will prevent debate on the real issues.

Could it happen here?

In the same week that former Fianna Fáil minister Ray Burke admitted tax fraud in a Dublin Court, disgraced Enron chief executive Kenneth Lay was indicted in Texas last week after being brought to court in handcuffs by the FBI.

Could it happen here? With a growing list of corporate misdemeanours and political corruption exposed in Ireland, we wonder will any government politician or business leader ever have to take the "perp walk" handcuffed into court.