SOCIAL DEMOCRATS’ LEADER Holly Cairns has said that cutting the Universal Social Charge will only put a “few euros” back in people’s pockets and that the Government should instead focuse on improving public services.

Cairns said that a signalled cut to the Universal Social Charge (USC) in the upcoming budget “won’t make a significant difference”.

Senior Government ministers have indicated that changes to USC are being considered for the October budget.

The USC was introduced in 2010 amid the fallout from the financial crisis.

Speaking at the Social Democrats’ annual think-in today ahead of the return of the Dail, Cairns said the Social Democrats won’t be cutting the USC “at this time and I think it’s more important to be honest with people than promise tax cuts.”

“Fine Gael are the boy who cried wolf on this, continuously promising to abolish the USC and all of these things – it’s yet to happen,” she said.

Cairns likened a USC cut to buying votes.

“The reality is that people have an aversion to paying tax in Ireland and that’s understandable because what do you get back for it?

“When the waiting lists are so long, when there is threadbare public services.

“Our approach is, unashamedly, to build those public services, and we think that if you’re paying taxes and you see things like genuinely free education, free childcare, all of those things would be the thing that would have an impact,” Cairns said.

She added:

“And we wouldn’t go around promising cuts like that to try and buy people’s votes because I think the electorate see through it.”

The Social Democrats leader said the USC is one of the “more progressive taxes” as it increases with the amount of money people earn.

“We would take an entirely different approach to this Government, we wouldn’t be out in advance of a Budget talking about tax cuts, we’d be talking about building public services that actually benefit people who pay their taxes.”

Nitrate derogation

Former party leaders Catherine Murphy and Róisín Shortall both also confirmed today that they plan to run in the next general election.

When the question was put to them by a reporter, Murphy responded: “That’s my plan”, with Shortall adding: “Ditto”.

The Social Democrats think-in today took place in the Communications Workers Union in Drumcondra, Dublin.

It is understood TDs and Councillors attended sessions focused on housing, agriculture and youth mental health as part of the half-day event.

On the issue of agriculture, Cairns told reporters:

“From my perspective, as a rural TD and somebody who grew up in a small farm, I think the current issue in the agriculture sector really just epitomises the approach of failure after failure after failure.

“And that is the short-termism that we have in Irish politics. We’ve seen an inevitable change happen recently, in terms of the nitrate derogation.

“Everybody knew that was coming. And when the minister extended the nitrate derogation recently, I put it to him ‘eventually, the EU will stop us from having this, what is the plan? Where’s the stability for farmers, if you keep pushing the constraints of the environment, in a kind of pretend attempt to support the sector?’

“There’s no future in that. And I think the approach has always been to tell the constituents, tell farmers what you think they want to hear, the short-term gain, when actually what the sector needs now is stability.”

Additional reporting from PA.