Paul Murphy
The universal social charge on workers should be dumped Independent Councillor Carol Lennon has told a meeting of Meath County Council. In a motion tabled at Monday’s meeting she said the charge should go from next January and help to protect all frontline public services in the process.
She told councillors that USC had been introduced as a temporary measure in 2011 in the middle of an economic crisis. It appeared that some people were unfamiliar with the meaning of the word “temporary”. Fifteen years was not temporary in anyone’s language. In 2011 workers paid €58.1 billion in USC. It should be abolished once and for all, she said.
Since its introduction numerous promises had been made by government ministers to abolish it in full but there was no honest intention to do so. “Enough is enough. The country is doing well but some people are not doing so well, and the recent fuel protests are a testament to this”.
The councillor said that in December 2015 the then Minister for Finance Simon Harris promised to abolish it for everyone. In 2016 another Fine Gael politician had said the USC was unfair. A number of commitments to abolish it had been made by a further FG politician Michael Noonan. In 2016 a Fine Gael manifesto had said it would be abolished in five years, she said.
A Fianna Fail manifesto had said more or less the same thing. When the General Election of 2016 was over the plans were abandoned and the commitments were dropped “and the workers are still paying.” The motion was seconded by Cllr Amanda Smyth and the motion was agreed by the council.
