Quite, it’s a secret.

I could share this link with you, but then I’d have to kill you.

At 11 cent they can’t afford to advertise

lol yeh and 78 for ”DEFENSE”…..

Incredible,
Adebayo

Cheers Gavin. At least we found a job for Pierce Brosnan in these tough times

Its a damn good one – nobody even knows they exist!

You obviously haven’t noticed the cut to child benefit? €10 a week is a significant hit for someone who’s relying on social welfare and CB to raise their families?

Also, haven’t you noticed that there are no jobs? All the incentives in the world aren’t going to help with that, the only reason unemployment figures are where they are is emigration.

As for “everyone paying PRSI will be hit for hundreds”, when we think of the tax increases and cuts as a proportion of income, it’s clear that the unemployed, low and middle earners will be the hardest hit, and high earners left realitvely unscathed, give or take the “mansion tax”, and it remains to be seen how that’s going to work with valuations, etc.

Kerry, they looked at their own salaries and top-ups and increased them yesterday. I can’t believe the media are not making more about that.
They had a system of 15,000 euro unvouched expenses, and yesterday they increased those to 23,000 vouched. So if TD Eamonn has a wife/sister Mary willing to write false receipts, then they are up 8,000 euro post yesterdays budget. The rest of the average-lower earners all took a bashing, the pigs at the trough gave themselves the equivalent of a pay rise.

Department of the Taoiseach €2.41- not much really, is it? I don’t think you read the figures closely.

They could look at cutting social welfare for people who have made absolutely no effort to retrain/seek work for years? A third of our current jobseekers rate was also there 2006-2008.

A lot of our debt is currently going towards paying for these guys

It’s the banks, stupid.

We spend almost as much on promissory notes and debt servicing as we do on social welfare, but where the former is going out of the circulation, at least the latter does some good, as it’s recirculated through local shops, small businesses, etc.

If you’re looking for someone to blame, you’re looking in the wrong direction.

Maybe there are more than just the banks to blame though, stupid!

Maybe our debt is being increased as a result of having to pay out social welfare rates that are unsustainable, to people who see it as a steady unchallenged income and dont bother trying to find work or better themselves, stupid!

Maybe paying our promissory notes when they fall due means we can borrow money to pay for the slackers mentioned above the easy social welfare handouts at a lower interest rate, meaning we dont have to cut the social welfare payments which sustains the amount of money circulating around the shops in the economy, stupid!

Maybe without a pretty enormous change to the mentality alot of people in Ireland have this cycle will continue unabated, stupid!

the left wing are called the looney left for good reason, as a past member of the socialist party i can tell you in no uncertain terms they are crazy, the fact is there are no progressive parties in the dail at the moment, if only we could get a party together that isn’t stuck in the past with these antiquated left and right wing ideologies, the fact is different scenarios require different approaches, different scenarios can occur at the same time, its about time we had some candidates that can think on their feet and act according to the requirement instead of some ridiculous political affiliation, at the same time, the electorate needs to forget party loyalty, it is anti-democratic and makes no sense at all in the current climate

@RP
If you’ve paid 400k in taxes you must be either pretty old or a relatively high earner. I always pictured average SP members to be fairly young, low paid and idealistic. Perhaps its my own preconceptions. I’m not suggesting anything btw, just genuinely curious.

you are correct mattoid, i joined sp 2 years ago, after i had lost everything, they want to nationalise ALL industry, pure insanity

Thanks – sorry to hear you lost everything and best of luck with rebuilding.

thanks mattoid, went back to school, i lost a lot, but i owe very little so it could be a lot worse

On the second one: Yeah. As I understand it the 2% levy is to cover direct exposure as a result of the Quinn difficulties; the government makes an annual contribution anyway to cover other miscellaneous claims that have to come from that fund (in cases where someone needs to make a claim but the other party isn’t insured, and so on).

With regard to the Kinsale thing, I’m not entirely sure, but I’d say it has something to do with the reform of the tax regime for exploration and natural resources. The current system (tax is 25% of profits, minus costs of exploration) was introduced in that Act, and Kinsale was the only commercially viable gas or oil field off Ireland at the time so it could have been some sort of compromise measure when the changes were made.

€694.96 is the most up-to-date figure:

http://www.cso.ie/quicktables/GetQuickTables.aspx?FileName=EHQ03.asp&TableName=Earnings+and+Labour+Costs&StatisticalProduct=DB_EH

@RP – That’s true, but when you’re dealing with a population of 4.6 million people the effect of an outlier is diminished quite a bit.

In fairness, the average is based on a very clearly defined amount – €7,924 of tax per year. An individual taxpayer will know how much they pay, and can multiply them accordingly. (If they pay €15,848 per year, they just double the figures above, and so on.)

It was something we had actually hoped to build into this year’s Budget Calculator – so that you could put in your income and get a personalised breakdown – but we weren’t able to get it going properly. Perhaps in future!

sound Gavan, its a stat i could never find on the cso anyway, dont quite agree on the effect of outliers on the population, a single bankers christmas bonus can bring the average up by a euro or 2, and remember, the average is not worked out over the entire population, just the working population

dont they draw down on bailout monies, at an increased interest rate, to repay money that just gets destroyed? thats my understanding of it

@SCP: Yes, but that’s a relatively crude way of breaking it down.

The figures above are based on proportions of government spending. Te promissory note will represent about 4.47% of the government’s total spending bill for 2013.

Given that the the average taxpayer contributes €7,924 to spending, this works out as €354.23 for the average taxpayer.

That’s not to say that the 1.7-million-or-so people in work cover the entire cost of government spending. Don’t forget that the government also gets money through VAT, corporation tax, excise duties and by borrowing.

Of course Doh! Makes sense now thnx

Fair to say, you don’t give much bang for your buck in Ireland.

Desperate stuff
Adebayo

So you don’t think a health service or social welfare should be funded at all? You must be delighted with the direction this country is headed in.
Maybe you think you’ll never be in a position to have to rely on either. Hope you’re right.

I hear ya Stephen, but if you don’t pay for it, who does?

I love how i had all green thumbs till 11am when the dolies woke up

haha. says the guy whos so busy he can tally and time reaction to his comments all day.

@ Church, you got that right. Most of the people who comment on this don’t even read the articles. They just go fishing for a comment they like.

We get double taxed in Ireland on a lot of things, thqats what I dont like, health, car tax, roads, prsi, house tax etc

If they cut the dole there would be protests, I would protest but I have to work, no excuse for the 400000 sitiin on the couch right now, watching Kyle etc…. but they wont because they are internet heroes/moans/followers

Never let the truth get in the way of a good rant though,
Adebayo

Not sure where you got that figure, M. The ‘International Co-operation’ amount above is the amount being spent on poverty eradication and hunger reduction. The 2013 estimate is for €498 million – not quite the €614 million you said, but still a decent chunk nonetheless. Also, the population is closer to 4.6 million than 4.2.

Anyway, that’s included above – it’s €57.18 a year for the average taxpayer.

Bear in mind that income tax is only 39.8% of the government’s income – the rest is made up from customs, excise, stamp duty, corporation tax, VAT, central bank profits, national lottery funding and more.