If our tax system is going to reflect an ethos of ‘those who can afford the most pay the most’ then we are going to have to have some form of child benefit.

Raising children costs money. In fact if both parents work it costs unspeakable amounts (day care until 5.5 years alone costs about €60K per child). If there isn’t some accounting for this cost in the way that either taxes are collected or benefits paid out then we are clearly going not going to meet the above ethos.

My thoughts regarding benefits is that they should be paid to everyone, regardless of their income. These benefits should be added to their income and top bands of income taxation should be adjusted to a gradually increasing scale above our current levels. This would reduce the administration of these benefits (as they are simply paid to everyone) and costs of providing them to everyone would be recovered through income tax.

I agree that child benefit should be means tested and I also suspect that there is widespread abuse of the likes of disability allowance. I had pondered the inconsistencies of index linking before. I also cannot understand why the mechanism only works upwards following inflation without considering deflation. Some frivolous expenditure on areas such as consultancy could and should be slashed, however, that would only have a relativly small impact.

Unfortunately, these easy targets amount to minor adjustments for cumulative, long term stability rather than the short term dose of hard action that is required. The only way to turn around state finances is for a politician to truly lead rather than take the path of least resistance.

What about suggesting a taboo such as the introduction of legislation to allow surplus civil servants to be made redundant? There is a layer of middle management fat in the HSE that serves no purpose other than defending their own interests. I’d be reluctant to touch the eduction budget considering its importance to the long term productivity of workforce.

By introducing a (public sector) levy rather than real pay cuts suggests that it can be removed as easily as it has been introduced. I see no reason why such a protected class of worker should be paid more than their peers in the private sector, or civil servants in other European countries for that matter. Medium to high earning civil servants should at least be subject to an real additional pay cut of 20% – 30% on some kind of reducing scale to keep a meaningful overall salary structure, and something like 50% for the highest earners. Again, legislation would be required to facilitate this.

Some social unrest would be inevitable, but these tough decisions need to be taken. To make them more palatable, there should be prosecutions or at the very least, any ongoing benefits such as pensions eliminated for the likes of the former Financial Regulator and the top management of the banks. Politicians should be forced to endure much greater cuts to their remuneration.

Such extremes would not have been necessary had the government not blindly issued a blanket guarantee of the majority of the banking sector. If Anglo Irish had been allowed to go under, only the 100k deposit protection would need to be honoured and we would not be left with a black hole hungry for capital from the state. Bond holders should be allowed to suffer the consequences. The resulting financial instability would be weathered by nationalising AIB and BOI until the economy stabilises.

It may be outside the scope of your article, but why was a real value-based property tax not introduced? Are our public servants too lazy to establish the cadastral and procedural framework needed for property records and valuations? We need to widen the tax base after all.

At least we have some sensible independent analysis from articles such as this one. The fact that an outsider such as Dr. Alan Ahearne was chosen as the governments chief economic advisor is another ray of hope, although, his advice should have been followed for the last 10 years, not just 10 months.

Indeed the cheapest super market available to anyone living as far down as ringsend is either the unspeakably shit, and expensive tesco on baggot st, or Dunnes on George’s st, and even then many of their vegetables are priced at levels equal to or above Fallon and Byrne’s who sell only the finest vegetables, watered by linda mcCartney’s bounteous spirit, and hand-picked by people with Ph.D’s in horticulture.

This is a very difficult country to live in if cheaply if you don’t have a car, which is beyond anyone on social welfare.

Also, this issue with means testing is odd. If people are on social welfare then they are automatically going to receive a new means tested child benefit anyway.

We run a form of gross means testing on all citizens already in the form of the tax net, how is that this becomes magically expensive when it is suggested for any benefits that are currently universal.

Hmm, there are two parts to this, firstly it’s because it is a lot more expensive to live on restricted income in the republic than it is in the north, or england.

Secondly Rent allowance is so big because the Public sector provision of accommodation has fallen so far behind need over the last 20 odd years. It’s the inevitable consequence of the government prioritizing private sector landlords over tenants.