If those reports are correct then let me try to translate what all of that means for a public servant such as a garda, a nurse or a teacher on an income of €45,000 per year. They are already paying approximately €5,000 of that income, between PRSI, pension contributions, health levies and income levies. What that proposal will mean - not that the Taoiseach has given us the figures, but if the figures that are reported in the media are correct - is that such a person will pay an additional €3,375. That is approximately €8,500 from the pay of a person in the workforce for approximately ten years before she pays tax, child care or her mortgage.
What she wants to know, and what the Taoiseach has not provided an answer for, is for what is she paying that. She did not create the problem. She did not borrow money from a bank to buy shares in the same bank. She is not somebody who drinks champagne in the hospitality suites of racecourses. She is just somebody who has gone out to work every morning, worked hard, tried to make a living, rear a family and provide for herself. All she wants is a modest standard of living. She understands that the country has economic problems at the moment and that there is a need for everybody to put their shoulder to the wheel. She is prepared to do that as well but she wants her Government to level with her and the Taoiseach has not done that today.
I am happy at Gilmore and Enda Kenny' argument but I am thrilled at Gilmore's words. He used the female pronoun in his example of a public servant. I don't remember that happening ever before. Way to mix it up Gilmore. That gave me a smile in spite of recession woes.
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