Eh, no, that's not how it works, because income derived from Social Welfare can only come from 2 places, borrowing and taxes, both of which are economic depressants.

Social Welfare systems exist to protect the vulnerable, not buttress consumer demand.

If you want to create consumer demand, you look at transaction taxes.

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Countries than produce fewer total CO2 emissions than Ireland:

Bangladesh (Pop. 162m)
Ethiopia (Pop. 80m)
Peru (Pop.30m)


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IBEC, as a union, are reflecting the narrow sectional interests of its members. It is not the function of IBEC to reflect the greater national interest.

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A country which refuses to enforce its own laws has no future.

You must be having a laugh. Social welfare exists to:
1. Keep section bertie/ff voters dependent on and grateful to the state.
2. Employ over 2000 public servants.
3. Pay the mortgages of landlords through rent allowance.
4. Funnel money to builders through social housing.
5. Discourage the poor away from criminal acts in middle class areas.
6. Support the poverty industry.
7.silly voodoo economics which you rightly complain about.
8. Support the middle class through universal child benefit and affordable housing.
The poor and vulnerable are a means to an end. There is plenty of scope for cuts but a 3% one is so blunt and so little to be useless. The 600m savings would be soon eaten up in greater demand for the programmes.

IBEC are a disgrace. The only reason they want welfare cut is so that their fat cat members won't have to pay more tax.

Probably the greatest purpose of social welfare is that it creates a "labour reserve". This allows for the bosses to force down wages.

Imagine representing your members' view that they can spend their money more efficiently than the State. Major social welfare reform is required to ensure that the poor and vulnerable are protected, supported and given ti'd means to escape poverty. As of now it it a plaything of the ff oligarchy (aka social partners).

But they don't spend their money efficently. This whole economic crisis proves that trickle down economics doesn't work. It leads to over investment in get rich quick schemes and speculation while long term investment to benifit the general population is neglected.

For fecks sake !! We ALL need to grow up. IBEC calling for welfare cuts. ICTU calling children who inherit (as a result of the death of their parents btw) "inheritance brats", public servants vowing to disrupt the country, private sector looking for everything to be cut - apart from what they have etc etc etc and on it goes

EVERY sector of the economy is going to have to take pain. That's me that's you that's everyone. People earning 10k and people earning 10k a week will have to take pain.

The objective should be to ensure that the people earning less, who have least capacity to take pain should be asked to take less pain. The people with no jobs should be asked to take less pain and helped get jobs. The people with jobs should be asked to take more pain to help those without jobs. The mé féin attitude being displayed by every sector (and they are each as bad as the other) is disgusting and utterly counter productive.

Of course welfare should be cut, public expenditure should also be cut, taxes should rise, loopholes should be closed, reliefs should be reduced, the burden needs to increase and expand. It would serve us all much better if the statement from IBEC said something about the need for increasing employment related taxes (levy etc), increasing capital taxes, reducing corporate tax reliefs AND reducing welfare payments. But it would also help if ICTU added to their rant about brats, the fact that income taxes need to increase, pension benefits need to be reduced, welfare payments need to fall AS WELL as increases in taxes for the mega rich etc.

People need to stop playing the NIMBY card, show some bloody maturity and look at the bigger picture. It was greed, self interest and short sightedness that got us into this mess and it will be the continuation of the same traits that prevents us from getting out of it.

rant over

The people who benifited from the celtic tiger are the ones who should now pay for the celtic carcus.

I have not seen the report as of yet, but such a request is absurd in my opinion coming from a group that can reclaim 60% on all redundancies made. Perhaps that should be abolished which will have an instant saving on the State...

Through no fault of my own I was made redundant but prior to that I paid my share of taxes etc, so now people want it cut across the board? Absurd and offensive is my opinion, although I agree that Social Welfare needs reforms, but the problem with that is... it will COST money to reform it, so instead, just pick on the vulnerable, it's easier and we can close our eyes and hope the 'problem' will go away.

Just remember, like in every sector of society, there is good and bad. I paid into a fund to be eligible for social welfare. Not everyone on social welfare is a criminal or a scam artist. Each case should be reviewed on its own merits but guess what? It COSTS the taxpayer to do this.

I'm willing to take a cut, don't get me wrong, but I have not seen food prices fall, in fact I'm still waiting for all these so called 'price wars' to come into effect.

If I knew food parcels were being distributed, I would have been there to collect one and guess what, I'm a local, national, citizen of this country, so don't close your eyes to real poverty and yes, to the comment from yesterday, I would have driven away if the bank didn’t own the car and I could afford to put petrol into it.

If anyone is to blame, your government is to blame - in my opinion of course.

Cheers