Ministers shouldn’t be so smug over a job half done

ONE of the best lines in the biggest grossing film ever in Ireland, Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie, comes when Agnes declares to a grumpy clerk in a tax office: ‘I don’t pay income tax, I changed my name to Google.’ Once again, Brendan O’Carroll hit the nail on the head. How come ordinary workers now see up to 50% of their income go to the State while a range of multinationals based in Ireland, from computers to pharmaceuticals, pay less than one-fifth of that on their profits?

So the sight this week in posed photographs of our two Ministers for Finance chortling and glorying in the media monicker of Morecambe and Wise as they smugly ‘celebrated’ higher than expected tax returns would have stuck in the craw of hard-working taxpayers as they battle to make ends meet.

We all know the increase in the money flowing into the State coffers is due to the crippling universal social charge, a penal extra tax which has squeezed another €4,000 from the average industrial wage.

In turn, something had to give in many households to pay these extra taxes – and in many cases it was a decision to give up private health insurance.

And as the ministers slapped each other’s backs, families battled floods and sick people poured into our overcrowded emergency departments. So as politicians elbowed each other in and out of assorted marine craft in an effort to make the front pages of the following day’s papers – real worry and hardship afflicts many. These are the families who were forced to make enormous sacrifices to save our casino banks.

To see the overcrowding in our public hospitals where waiting times verge on the criminal while private hospitals constantly advertise that a team of consultants is ‘waiting for you’ in their A&E departments is grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented. Couple that with the current lavish advertising campaigns being run by all the health insurers and one can only presume that there are healthy profits to be made in private healthcare. There is only one motive for ordinary families making enormous sacrifices to buy private health insurance – fear... fear that the public system will leave them waiting for too long not just on trolleys, but also for follow-up appointments and if necessary, non-urgent surgery and procedures.

So ministers need to be very careful when they boast about their achievements. The last thing the electorate wants are meaningless promises in the run up to the election.

Do politicians really believe that, apart from those employed in the public sector, any father working for a small private company has a hope in hell of getting full pay on paternity leave?

And political parties promise all they want about increases in the minimum wage – it doesn’t cost them a cent – indeed it will increase taxation into the State coffers.

Uncertainty still grips many families as they wonder where and how their children will find jobs.

No one will believe any promises made on health, education or the environment because they experience the reality of these services every day. But they will look at real concrete proposals to create jobs because this is at the heart of our recovery. Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin should also realise we would appreciate a modicum of political humility.