Leading clerical campaigners for social justice have called on the Government to act with conscience in the upcoming Budget, by increasing taxation on the wealthy rather than cutting expenditure on the poor.
Fr Seán Healy, director of Social Justice Ireland, has sent a detailed proposal to the Government showing that adjustments of €4bn can be got in Budget 2010 while protecting the vulnerable and without reducing social welfare rates.
''However, this requires Government to commit to increasing Ireland's total tax-take to a level closer to the EU average. This can be done while keeping Ireland a low-tax economy.''
Fr Peter McVerry has also called for the Government to look at increased taxation on high earnings rather than cuts to social welfare expenditure, while writing in the November 2009 issue of the Jesuit publication Working Notes.
''The reality is that it is the same individuals and families who will experience multiple cutbacks across a range of income supports and social services,'' he said.
''The possibility that increased taxation should have a role to play seems to be off-limits in the debate. The approach proposed is endorsed publicly by many influential voices - and has, no doubt, been advocated in quiet lobbying by powerful sectors intent on ensuring that different means of addressing the problem, which might affect their interests, are not pursued.''
Addressing the annual Citizenship service in Christ-church Cathedral, Dublin last Sunday Fr Gerry O'Hanlon, author of God and the Recession, said that while it is right that we are all being asked to come together for the common good to face the economic crisis, that ''this needs to be done in way that is seen to be fair, and above all that protects the most vulnerable and asks the strongest to bear the heaviest weight''.
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