If the measure was simply our ability to create additional jobs, we would not have a problem. We know we have a problem. We have to ensure that those people who are driving this economy and creating the wealth receive more sustained incentives for working as hard and as productively as they do. That clearly is manifest in the wish for an increase in real take home pay. The most effective way to increase real take home pay for all of us, whether we work in the public or the private sector, is to improve productivity by ensuring that our competitive costs do not rise.
This is a complex area, but one of the simplest ways to achieve that is to reduce the overall burden of taxation, specifically the level of income tax, in particular in those sectors of the productive workforce where the cross over between dependency on social welfare in its entirely and gainful employment in the economy is of such marginal benefit that some people choose not to bother to make that change. That is the focus of attention. I will send a copy of the presentation made on behalf of the Government by Michael Tutty, the Second Secretary of the Department of Finance to every Deputy. It outlines in statistical and total terms the progress that has been made. By inference, it gives an indication of the kind of progress that could be made with the next agreement, if we get one and the discipline to which we all subscribe is adhered to.
I have said in and outside the House and repeat that neither I as Minister and my party nor this Government claim ownership of the economic success we are currently enjoying. It is the product of successive agreements and the full participation of all the social partners. Unless we continue to recognise that ownership of that success is shared by all of us we will not be able to build a secure foundation for a future agreement. It is quite clear that a reduction in personal income tax depends, among other things, on the stabilisation of public expenditure. We cannot have increased levels of public expenditure, including high levels of public sector pay on one hand and tax reductions on the other, and fit within the macroeconomic framework to which we all subscribe.