No point looking to the proverbial gods as sky falls in

As we stand on the edge of the abyss, it is business as usual for our bumbling and inane Cabinet members, writes Vincent Browne.

Today the Dáil meets at 10.30am and there is scheduled to be Leaders' Questions for 14 minutes. Then at 10.44 there will be statements on macroeconomic and fiscal outlook.

This will continue until 8.30pm, although with a "sos" of undeclared duration at some stage. Sos, as we all recall from our school days, is Irish for "rest". They like their sos in Leinster House.

Tomorrow the Dáil will assemble again at 10.30am and continue to 4.30pm during which time there will be further statements on macro and fiscal outlook, perhaps with a sos also. We are facing the gravest crisis in the State's history, arguably ever, although perhaps the Civil War was of graver crisis.

We are on the verge of losing our sovereignty over our economic and social affairs, because of the state-of-the-art ineptitude of the present Government, aided and abetted by the best-practice ineptitude of the two main Opposition parties, who are set to form the next government.

The only means of avoiding this forfeiture of sovereignty is for us to devise a credible strategy to convince the financial markets that we can get out of the debt disaster we have created.

Our national parliament is to spend a total of 16 hours, minus the time given to sosanna, not examining ways in which we might avert this impending disaster but to set-piece orations on who is to blame for the calamity and the helplessness of the opposing parties in addressing the calamity.

Wouldn't you expect that the people we have elected to manage the affairs of the State would gather together in this hour of peril and stay in near-permanent sessions over the next few weeks to devise a strategy or a series of alternative strategies?

That they would call expert opinion on how we should address our difficulties, that they would engage the social partners and the various organisations representing different interest groups, in an effort to devise a national response, or national responses, based on differing political perspectives?

Instead the group of 15 state-of-the-art dunderheads (aka the Cabinet) will sit on their own, as they have been doing for the last two days, devising their own private stratagem, without any appreciation that they are uniquely incapable of coming up with anything that is remotely credible, since they are the ones who got us into this hole in the first place.

And having come up with some concoction, it will be railroaded through the Dáil with the aid of the party whips, whether a majority of the Dáil like it or not.

And not a single member of the Government parties will seek to defy this inanity at a time of such gravity.

I don't know whether it was Euripides or Seneca who first coined the phrase: "Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad". It fails to capture the essence of the Irish predicament 2010. Not even madness could explain what we have done, what we are doing and how we are doing what we are doing. The gods have found some other device.

I asked public officials in the last week to give me some basic information on our circumstances related to income tax.

From the information I have received, the anticipated income tax yield in 2010 will be €79 billion, that is from 2.2 million tax cases. Tax cases are slightly different from taxpayers for many taxpayers pay as a couple. Also there are more tax cases than there are people at work and this is because people who earn income outside the workforce are included in the number of tax cases.

Nearly 650,000 tax cases are on incomes of €15,000 or less. They comprise 29 per cent of total tax cases and they get only 6 per cent of total income.

Two-thirds of all tax cases relate to incomes of less than €35,000. Although they form 66 per cent of all tax cases, they get just 30 per cent of the total income, an average of €24,230 per year and, quite justifiably, they pay almost no tax.

In spite of this, the state-of-the-art dunderheads are planning to disadvantage this group further.

So much for their "fairness" mantras as they deigned to speak to the populace from their €200,000 chariots on their way to the meeting. And isn't there an appropriateness about them meeting in Farmleigh, the place they bought for €22 million after it had gone on sale for €13 million (honest, they did that – not for nothing are they state-of-the-art dunderheads)?

Over 37,000 earn over €150,000. Their average income is €309,507 per year. They pay only 27 per cent of their income in tax. They form just 1.7 per cent of all tax cases and yet they get 14.5 per cent of total income.

Would it be so bad if they paid 37 per cent of their total income in tax, which would ease the deficit burden by €1 billion a year?

It won't happen and you can bet nobody in the Dáil today will suggest it happens and even if they do you can still bet it will never happen.

It's the gods again.