No other country in the European Union spends as little as Ireland, as a proportion of national income, on social supports for the disabled, elderly and other disadvantaged groups, the CORI Justice Commission has claimed.
In its annual socio-economic review, published today, the commission, which represents Catholic congregations in the State, urged the Government to reverse its low-tax economic strategy and invest more in social provisions.
Citing "substantial deficits" in infrastructure and social supports, the commission said: "The Government's current policy focus will ensure that substantial numbers of people are condemned to live in social exclusion and substantially larger numbers of people will be forced to accept a poor quality of life for the foreseeable future."
The 187-page report, entitled Priorities for Fairness, found that the Irish allocation to social expenditure was the lowest in Europe as a percentage of both GNP and GDP, two measurements of national income.
"There remains a considerable gap between Ireland and the next-lowest country, Spain," it added.
The report draws on figures published by the European Commission earlier this year but dating from 2000, the last year for which relevant statistics were available.
Father Seán Healy, director of CORI (the Conference of Religious of Ireland) Justice Commission, said: "Nothing has happened since those figures were collated to alter the situation."
Social-protection expenditure, as defined by the EU statistics agency Eurostat, includes spending on healthcare, housing, and benefits for the disabled, elderly, families and children.
According to CORI, Ireland's spending on social protection as a proportion of GDP was 13.2 per cent below the EU average, and 6.9 per cent behind Spain.
In addition, Ireland collected a lower proportion of GDP in tax than any other country across the EU, according to an OECD report published last year. Taxation as a percentage of GDP stood at 28 per cent in 2002, compared to 34 per cent in Portugal, the country with the next-lowest take, and an EU average of 40.5 per cent.
"Over recent years," CORI said, "Ireland has evolved into a too-low-tax economy.
"In the context of these figures, the question needs to be asked: if we expect our economic and social infrastructure to catch up to that in the rest of Europe, how can we do this while simultaneously gathering less taxation income than it takes to run the infrastructure already in place in those other European countries?
"Simply, we will never bridge the social and economic infrastructure gaps unless we gather a larger share of our national income and invest it in building a fairer and more successful Ireland."
The report calls for "a fairer level of taxation" to be collected, including the negotiation of a standard EU corporation tax rate of about 17.5 per cent. Four other socio-economic priorities are identified, namely, addressing "the social provision deficit", minimising social exclusion, adopting "standard fiscal management policies", and develop a rights-based approach to policy development.
The report said Department of Finance projections showed there was "significant room for further current-account spending over the next few years. Additional spending of €1.5 billion a year is more than feasible. Its effect would only be to reduce the sizeable current-account surpluses and to increase marginally the scale of overall budget deficits."
The report also calls for social, economic and cultural rights to be enshrined in the Constitution. These rights should include the right "to sufficient income to live life with dignity", the right "to meaningful work" and the right "to appropriate accommodation".
