SOCIAL JUSTICE Ireland is to urge the IMF-ECB-EU troika to accept the € 3.6 billion in adjustments for 2012 as sufficient to avoid “making a bad situation worse”.
Represented by Fr Seán Healy, Sr Brigid Reynolds and Michelle Murphy, the research and advocacy group is to meet members of the troika at the Department of Finance this morning.
They are expected to point out that, despite Government compliance with IMF-ECB-EU bailout requirements, economic growth is not reaching forecast targets, jobs are not being created on the scale required, and unemployment is not falling at the rate envisaged.
They will say finance is not available on the scale required for small and medium enterprises, and that essential services are being reduced to such an extent that the health and wellbeing of people are at risk.
They will also say that the community and voluntary sector has been experiencing a huge increase in demand for its services, while its funding has been reduced dramatically.
They will present a briefing document to the troika entitled Adjustment Choices: A Fairer Future is Possible. The document says measures in the State's memorandum of understanding with the troika fail "to protect poor or vulnerable people, continue the process of dispossessing poor people so that bankers and bond holders may be repaid in full, a process we consider to be profoundly immoral and unjust, and provide no investment to help generate economic recovery".
It says there are “serious doubts” whether the future set out in the memorandum can be achieved in the changed national and international circumstances and whether the pathway it sets out is fair or just.
As an alternative, Social Justice Ireland will propose that “the borrowing reduction target is achieved by tax increases and expenditure reductions on a ratio of 2:1, the opposite to the memorandum’s approach”.
It will propose that there should be no reductions in welfare rates and that child benefit should be unchanged. Tax credits should be refundable where the working poor are concerned and a new initiative would see up to 100,000 long-term unemployed people take up part-time jobs.
Details at socialjustice.ie
