What are your views on Multiculturalism in Ireland? - Threadbanned User List in OP

What about folks paying full whack mortgages and 50% taxes to subsidise the rest.

What about them? There are very few people in Ireland, apart from those few who are already incredibly wealthy, paying an effective tax rate of 50% on their income, and even less among those are paying full whack mortgages. Do you expect anyone should feel any sympathy for them or something?

I don’t have an issue with 20% of private new builds being allocated for social housing, regardless of whether their tenants are jobless locals or foreigners. I don’t expect anyone should feel any sympathy for them either.

I’ll bet you can guess which party is in favour of introducing a wealth tax by way of increasing revenue in order to cover the costs of providing for public services in what is widely regarded as a low tax country -

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2022/08/31/recommendation-to-increase-take-from-wealth-property-and-inheritance-taxes/

Increasing taxes is inevitable, because Government isn’t currently raising enough from taxes to cover the costs of public services -

https://www.socialjustice.ie/article/effective-tax-rates-after-budget-2022-and-why-ireland-remains-low-tax-country

Means there are more likely to be even more people who will be looking to be provided with housing at no cost, whether they be jobless locals, foreigners, or people who are employed but are on low incomes who pay a very low effective tax rate and are reliant on schemes like HAP and medical cards, etc.

You’d want to be some miserable excuse for a human being if you’re on an effective tax rate of 50% with a full whack mortgage complaining about people who are dependent upon welfare.

For the middle class, yes, but not for the Rich which is why SFs wealth tax will never be a runner, the Rich will just avoid it.

To a certain extent but the middle class would never be able to afford the tax advisors to make themselves as tax efficient as the rich. The wealth gap between the rich and middle class has increased but yet more tax burden is placed on the middle classes to pay for the public services that everyone in society enjoys access to.

Bit more nuanced than that though.

The middle classes can well afford tax advisors to advise them on how to make themselves tax efficient, it’s just a fact that the middle class generally doesn’t have as much wealth as the rich to begin with. But as for the idea that there’s more of a tax burden placed on the middle class, I’d be needing to quantify what you’re thinking of when you refer to the middle class.

In terms of income anyways, €60k is the median household income in Ireland, with somewhere between 14-17% on income above €100k, who would be classed as rich, and then wealthy are those 2% with incomes approaching the levels maninasia was alluding to earlier in suggesting they’re paying a 50% effective tax rate. That 2% of people are paying more in income tax than those earning below what would put them in the middle class bracket, those on less than €35k annual household income.

It’s also worth noting that while the middle class makes up 60 odd % of the people who contribute a greater tax burden (by virtue of the numbers of people in that class), they also take advantage of the greatest amount of State transfers (public spending on welfare, housing, education and healthcare, etc) -

The middle classes are of course beloved of pundits and politicians, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar among them as he famously based his 2017 Fine Gael leadership run on an appeal to the "people who get up early in the morning".

To be fair to Leo, it would be foolish for any politician to ignore a group that accounts for 60.4pc of the population and pays the bulk of taxes. 

And there is political capital in identifying them as those who "aspire to something better for themselves and their families".

These people, the Taoiseach said, are those who "feel they pay for everything, but qualify for nothing". 

Yes, they do pay 62.3pc of all taxes according to the OECD, but the report also shows that those who give also receive the biggest chunk of state transfers at 54.1pc.

In fact it is the State's relatively progressive taxation and transfer system that props up the broad middle-class base here, transforming Ireland from one of the least equal countries into one of the most as the rich pay a higher chunk of income tax than in most other countries, while low-earners get most of the tax credits.

(Source: Irish Independent website)

It’s why I wouldn’t be looking down my nose at people in less fortunate circumstances than my own, or complaining about their being dependent upon the State, or bigging myself up because I pay more taxes than someone else (that’s really not the great boast anyone who claims it thinks it is!). In fact, anyone who considers themselves middle class should be counting their blessings instead of complaining and comparing themselves to other people, as our tax system in Ireland means that, as Bríd Heffernan of Chartered Accountants of Ireland puts it -

"In the Irish context, we have what is known as the 80:20 rule where, broadly speaking, 80% of the tax take is generated from 20% of the earners," said Bríd Heffernan, Leader of Tax and Public Policy at Chartered Accountants of Ireland.

(Source: RTÉ website)

You’re right though about a wealth tax, the wealthy simply wouldn’t pay it, their accountants and tax consultants would find ways and means to help their clients avoid paying taxes they don’t have to. You’ll never guess where the wealthiest accountants and tax consultants reside? 😁

Chartered and certified accountants and tax experts earned a median income of €56,473 in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown in 2016, the highest in the country, followed by Dublin City (€54,392) and Clare (€51,778).

Business sales executives earned a median income of €43,233 in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown in 2016, the highest in the country, followed by Fingal (€41,076) and Dublin City (€40,970).

Financial managers and directors earned a median income of €96,846 in Cork City in 2016, followed by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown (€89,071) and Dublin City (€86,623).

…

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown had the lowest proportion of households where the majority of gross income came from working age social welfare at 5.8% in 2016, see Map 1.3. Meath had the next lowest proportion at 10.3%, followed by Fingal at 10.5%.

In contrast, one in five households in Longford (20.4%), Donegal (20.2%) and Carlow (18.6%) received the majority of their income from working age social welfare payments.

Note that a household where over half of its gross income came from working age social welfare (excluding child benefits and state pension) was considered majority of income.

(Source: CSO website)

But to address I suppose the real question - just how multiculturally diverse is an area like Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown? It turns out they’re not too bad -

Nationality | Population

 United Kingdom - 11,927

 Poland - 3,120

 United States - 2,181

 India - 1,919

 Philippines - 1,325

 China - 1,223

 France - 1,178

 Spain 1,024

 Romania - 953

 Germany - 926

(Source: Wikipedia entry for Dún Laoighre-Rathdown)

They even managed an Africa Day in 2022 -

Ola Majekodunmi was born in Lagos, Nigeria and lives in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. She is a broadcaster, freelance journalist, Gaeilgeoir, public speaker, creator, co-founder of Beyond Representation and Board of Directors member of Foras na Gaeilge, Dublin Film Festival and a member of Galway Film Centre’s National Talent Academy Steering Committee. A graduate of IADT, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council are delighted that Ola is our Africa Day Ambassador for 2022.

(Source: Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council website)

I’m cherry-picking of course, from one of the wealthiest areas in the country, but it’s enough evidence to call into question whether the whole “multiculturalism bad” narrative isn’t just a case of a small portion of the middle class who are cherry-picking what suits their many narratives and hoping to gain support from the people they have little interest in otherwise.

Exactly, they waste it on budget overspends, social bonuses, HSE is actually well funded also. Billions now on these asylum and refugee policies

In case you haven't noticed.... they already have..!!

Imagine you were a loved one of a staff member in city west, or a family member of Gardai in nearby stations, you’d be worried sick daily. This just isn’t worth it. The disgraceful obligation being put on staff and their loved ones just isn’t acceptable…. Our clown shoes politicians don’t give two fûcks though… too busy prioritising and having us risk everything to pander to this ‘international’ give away agenda.

Apparently a riot in city west last night, very violent.

what kind of absolute scum are coming into this country???

Ahh was pretty much tongue in cheek, as much as to say the place is about as multiculturally diverse as anywhere else in the country*; they just happen to be more wealthy is all, which was the actual point I was making - social issues aren’t caused as a result of people from different backgrounds and cultures inhabiting the same area, they’re more likely to be highlighted in less affluent areas is all.

If we were to talk of which demographics are most likely to show up in the social issues stats, then it stands to reason that the vast majority are white European in countries where white Europeans are the vast majority of the population. If I’d wanted to aim for blatant misrepresentation I’d have done something like the NWCI stating that one in four homeless people are women.

*I wasn’t thinking in terms of European/non-European, white/non-white, just the various different countries is all.

What's the deal with all the young lads in these centres?

Big groups of Georgians and Algerians by some accounts. All male, cooked up in a small space, two incompatible cultural groups. Its like a powder keg.

Not sure where SF stand on this to be honest; if I was being cynical, the govt are putting as many of these immigrants as possible into working class areas in order to damage SF, but it has sort of got out of hand at this stage and they have lost total control of the issue....

Bullcr**.

Shinners have totally behind this lunacy.

Some Shinners on the ground maybe squirming because they know that they wont be able to keep their immigration/open borders principles and actually go looking for votes in working class areas bullshyting how they fight for the downtrodden Irish.