The Social Democrats would not cut the Universal Social Charge in the budget – with party leader Holly Cairns lauding the tax as among the “more progressive” charges levied on workers.
With USC cuts predicted to play a major part of the Government’s budget day package, Ms Cairns told reporters at her party’s think-in in Dublin that a cut would only put a “few euro” back in the pockets of voters and it “won’t make the significant difference people are looking for – we wouldn’t be cutting USC at this time”.
“It’s more important to be honest with people than promise tax cuts,” she said, adding that Fine Gael were akin to “the boy who cried wolf” after breaking previous campaign trail promises to abolish the charge, which was introduced in the aftermath of the financial crash and is still indelibly associated with the tax hikes and spending cuts of the austerity era.
She claimed that people in Ireland have “an aversion” to paying tax, which she said was “understandable”.
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“What do you get back for it, when the waiting lists are so long, when there are threadbare public services?” she asked. “I think the USC is one of the more progressive taxes because it increases with the amount of money that you earn, so it wouldn’t be a focus for the party, no.”
Ms Cairns also claimed that people on politicians’ wages had no capacity to understand the reality of waiting lists for medical procedures, or the housing crisis. “If you’re on a minister’s wage, a TDs wage, a Taoiseach’s wage, there is no housing crisis, there is no waiting lists, you can pay for everything. They don’t seem to really understand the reality of what people are facing. It’s obliviousness,” she said, calling for a change in Irish electoral politics that reflected the appetite for change she detected among voters.
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“I don’t think they could be told any more, the electorate have told them in the last election, really and truly their time is up,” she said of mainstream parties. However, she did not have an answer on whether she would take a minister’s salary if she was in government.
“Truth be told I have not thought about that. We haven’t taken the pay increases, but you don’t go into a job and not get paid at all. It’s up to the individual person,” she said.
Ms Cairns said she didn’t have a particular target in mind for the Social Democrats in the local elections. The party currently has 21 councillors.
“I don’t know how many people we’re going to be able to get elected,” she said.
“What is difficult to really analyse is the appetite for that kind of alternative to vote for, because it hasn’t been tested yet, we’re a new party ... Our aim is to get into as many local electoral areas and constituencies as possible and offer people that alternative and I think and hope that a lot more people than we might predict would like it.”
