Workers Solidarity Movement

The “World Wealth Report 2011”, published by finance conglomerates Merrill Lynch and Capgemini, has shown that the amount of wealth held by the world’s wealthiest elite increased by almost 10% in 2010.  The number of ‘High Net Worth Individuals’ (i.e. those with investable assets of over $1million) also rose last year – to 10.9 million.

Just 12 weeks after the Moriarty Tribunal found that he made corrupt payments to Michael Lowry TD in order to influence the granting of a mobile phone licence, Denis O’Brien has shown that for Ireland’s elite the good times still roll.  Digicel, the mobile phone company wholly owned by O’Brien, has announced that its net profit for the year ending March 2011 increased by €120million.  In keeping with the true lack of transparency so beloved by our super-wealthy however, Digicel refused to divulge the actual net profit figure.  What was announced was that O’Brien’s own personal income from Digicel last year was €28million, plus of course whatever income he has from his various other companies and investments.

Despite the rest of us struggling to pay off the bills, poverty wages and coping with increased living costs or being flung on the dole the so-called great and good in our society the wealthiest have never had it so good. Top of the list in the wee north is Eddie Haughey who has a combined wealth of 340 million.

The richest 300 people in Ireland are now worth 57 billion, almost as much as the entire IMF /ECB bailout. What's more, when the rest of us saw our take home pay fall massively in the last year they got 13% or 6.7 billion euro richer. Which hasn't stopped them demanding pay cuts for the rest of us.

Today German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, politely rebuffed any chance of re-negotiation of the interest rates we are paying on our substantial loan from the ECB/IMF, saying that we knew what we were getting into when we took the loan. It is time to reflect on the difference that loan is making to the lives of those affected.

One picture or story can tell us all we need to know and it should bring comfort to each tax-payer now labouring under the additional losses suffered in their pay packet due to the universal social charge to see such a story.

Picture this, the story of the Kelly family.

Countless walking tours make their way around Dublin daily; generally educating the masses of tourists on the lives lived on these streets before us. It was a different kind of walking tour, comprising around 200 people, that hit the streets around Stephen’s Green on October 9th last.

Last year the Exchequer lost €7.4bn as a result of the tax break regime, over three times the EU average.  According to the government’s own Economic and Social Research Institute, 80% of the tax relief available on pension contributions goes to the wealthiest 20% of earners.

Saturday 30th October saw the WSM take part in the latest 1% Network event, an after dark Halloween Treasure Hunt around Dublin's exclusive Shewsbury and Ailesbury roads taking in the mansions of multi millionare bankers, developers and financers as well as the HQ of Allied Irish Bank and the 32 million in tax avoidance of the luxury Four Seasons hotel. The tour was led off by a vampire capitalist accompanied by a contingent of Zombie bankers and developers and ghost estates with the vampire showing how much wealth was present at each stop and explaining the contacts between the 1%, the media and the government that enabled them to make hundreds of millions during the tiger.  The tour was accompanied by uniformed Gardai and a car of special branch political police.  The 1% network is a coalition of socialist groups including the WSM, eirigi, ISN and Semora Spraoi formed to highlight the fact that the richest 1% own 34% of the wealth.

Announcing their support for Saturday’s 1% Network ‘Halloween Treasure Hunt’, anarchist organisation Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM) has said that the government’s proposed €15 billion of cuts would not be necessary if the wealthy were “made to pay their share.”

Confirmation that a large amount of wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of Irish people has come from an analysis of figures by Tom O’Connor, Lecturer in Economics in Cork Institute of Technology. O’Connor has analysed the figures contained in the Bank of Ireland’s ‘Wealth of the Nation’ report which stated that there were 33,000 millionaires in Ireland in 2006.  The total ‘net worth’ of these individuals (i.e. excluding the value of their principal residences and allowing for any borrowings) in 2006 was €156.21 billion.