There are certain things which make my blood boil. But, rather than go through a Victor Meldrew list of irks, let me get straight to the point.
RTE News is reporting that the Government is yet to decide on whether to tax child benefit. The story comes after Social Protection Minister Joan Burton was quoted in a weekend newspaper as saying that people earning over €100,000 should pay tax on child benefit.
In a similar spirit of not beating about the bush, let me be frank here and say that this is sheer and utter idiocy.
What possible sense is there in taxing a universal benefit? Surely anyone could work out that it is better not to give a benefit out in the first place than to try to claw some of it back with a tax?
But why is this? Well it is supposed to be because, in the words of Minister Burton herself on Newstalk radio, it would take an army of civil servants to means test people for universal benefits. So, that would be for the likes of medical cards and so forth too. But why?
How in this day and age of information technology would it take an army of civil servants to means test people?
The answer is that it would not. It would merely take a bit of political gumption and some civil service arse kicking, both of which seem to be in short supply.
In the eGovernment 2012-205 document, on page 15 under the heading of "Identity And Authentication" it states:
"The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has developed a central system to provide a single view of the identity of Public Service customers, known as the Single Customer View.
"This system takes identity data feeds from a range of national registers across the public service and seeks to match them. CMOD has successfully piloted the system and a range of associated applications with public bodies such as data matching, PPSN look-up, address matching/validation, household control information, and online authentication services. These will be made available on an incremental basis. These solutions will be instrumental in helping public bodies to improve the quality of customer identity data, improve assurances around identity claims, remove duplication of effort from recording and checking processes, and facilitate the provision of online identity services."
The operative words here are "has successfully piloted the system". So there is already the technology there for a view of the citizen which would facilitate a basic means testing facility that could be used to control previously universal benefits. Surely it would make more sense to use such as system so that anyone over the €100,000 threshold has benefits cut and anyone who has benefits cut can subsequently make the case for reinstatement if there are grounds to do so?
Surely this would mean that the army of civil servants could be deployed elsewhere and the State could make the most of the money it has.
The proposal to tax child benefits is ludicrous in the extreme as it ignores the problem in that we do not have unified public services. Why can’t a single view of the citizen link income tax with social protection and healthcare? Imagine walking into a public service office and presenting your PPS number and photo ID and being able to see immediately whatever services, benefits or entitlements apply immediately?
If this single view system has already been trialled, then why not fully employ it so that means testing is merely a batch process across multiples services run over a weekend? It would mean that these divisive and ultimately pointless debates about the rights and wrongs would go out the window and the truth of the matter could be dealt with. It doesn’t matter how many divisions of the grey army protest outside the Dáil, there is no need for an over 70 citizen on a fat board pension of €300,000 to have a medical card
So what is the excuse for failing to implement what is already there?
I don’t know. But I shall certainly be asking the question.
I once got a straight answer from a government minister and it has spoiled me with high expectations.
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