a politicians promise is as good as a lie

The towing has begun - army specialist vehicle is taking away tractors 📸Brian Connolly

Cork Protesters have been attacked and pepper sprayed in at the Whitegate refinery

Ireland's personal taxation regime is the second worst among 38 peer countries according to the Tax Foundation. High marginal taxes (paid at very modest thresholds) have been in place since 2008. There has been almost no improvement over two decades despite having the resources to do so - a relentless rise in government expenditure has been prioritised year after year. A simple example illustrates how bad it is. The average electrician or plumber working for construction company will be on the top marginal rate, whereby the state takes more of every additional euro than the person gets to keep. If he/she wants to earn self employed income, the government will take more than the worker, and a tax return will have to be filed, involving time and/or accountancy fees. Is it any wonder finding tradespeople is hard?

Why? If I call Treyvauds and ask for a steak, chips and mushroom meal for 100 people you’ll do me a price all inclusive, probably with a discount. If I call and say I want to bring a group and don’t know how many, or what food they want, you’ll give me a P/P charge based on your menu. It’ll be much more expensive because of my lack of organisation and planning. If you want to build an extension, you can get either a price, or a rate for labour + materials. You go to an architect, have the extension drawn up, the materials specified and you go to tender. Three builders tell you that’ll be 1. €15,000, 2. €20,000 and 3. €25,000. You go with the cheapest. On the first day, you tell him you’ve changed your mind. You ditch the plans and say you want a different design, but you don’t know what it is. You do this every day and at every stage. He has no choice but to charge you a day rate for every man working on site, plus the costs of every material. And an extra charge for undoing the work he keeps doing that you decide to change after he’s started. That’s the BAM model, go in cheap, with expensive rates that are known up front and in the contracts. ABSOLUTELY NO GOVERNMENT CONTRACT SHIULD GO TO TENDER WITHOUT A FULLY COORDINATED BIM MODEL. They told BAM to build a hospital without a design. BAM were pouring concrete floors without knowing where pipes and other services were going, and had to go back and drill them afterwards. If the customer who ordered 100 steaks off you and changed it after the steak were cooked to 20 Chicken, 30 fish, 40 Vegetarian and 10 Lamb get the original price, or would you look for the cost of the 100 wasted steaks, plus the 100 new meals, plus an additional prep fee?