Sir, - I very much appreciate the coverage you gave (Business This Week, July 31st) to the launch of SIPTU's pre-Budget submission, "A Budget for the Needy not the Greedy". While realising that not all the major points in a complex, 28-page document could be given equal prominence - or even noted at all - may I set the record straight on two issues in case any of your readers got the wrong impression about our key demands.
On tax, we set out three possible scenarios. The first was the "bare minimum" needed to honour the P-2000 commitments. This would cost £360 million and would be seen by us as hopelessly inadequate in view of the fact that even last year a package costing £517 million proved possible.
The second possibility would be a package costing the same as last year's. In today's terms, this would be about £570 million. However, we consider it perfectly possible to improve on this amount, given the enormous improvement in Exchequer finances since then. In the first seven months of this year, the surplus has been £1,590 million, compared with £929 million in the same period last year.
The third possibility - which is what we are actually seeking - is a package which costs about £727 million and achieves three major objectives. It removes anyone earning less than £100 a week from the tax net. It ensures that no PAYE worker becomes liable for the top rate of tax until their wages exceed average industrial earnings. And it means that no married PAYE worker (with spouse not working), on a standard 39-hour week, pays tax until earning £185 per week or £4.75 per hour - just over the proposed new minimum wage.
Unfortunately, your report omitted to mention this third scenario, which is in fact SIPTU's key demand on the tax side. Perhaps it was edited out for reasons of space.
Also omitted was our insistence that the P-2000 commitments on social inclusion are as important as the ones on tax. They too must be honoured in full. We have detailed proposals for ensuring this, including increases in social welfare payments, the introduction or improvement of various schemes, the provision of extra places in targeted jobs, measures for the long-term unemployed and extra expenditure on the Employment Service.
In other words, we believe we put forward a balanced set of tax, welfare, employment, anti-poverty and anti-discrimination proposals and would like to have seen more of this balance reflected in the report, while appreciating the difficulty involved in doing so. - Yours, etc., Jimmy Somers,
General President, SIPTU, Liberty Hall, Dublin 7.