Local Fine Gael Councillor Neale Richmond has launched an online campaign to highlight the extent of Ireland’s burgeoning national debt. On Neale’s website members of the public can now view Ireland’s national debt clock as it increase by the second.

“This campaign is not about scoring political points, but rather it is aimed to help inform the Irish people as to the massive millstone of debt that has been built up over the past two years and is growing by the second.

“Countries almost never pay back their debt. They just service it by paying the interest on it every year. It costs about €5 billion a year to service the debt, that’s roughly what we spend on education. The way things are heading, it will cost us about €10 billion a year by the middle of the decade.It is vital that we get our borrowing under control. We do not want our repayments to overwhelm us.

“We need to tackle both high spending and the low tax take. The Government has introduced some measures to bring public spending under control but there will have to be more over the next few budgets.

“Fine Gael’s Richard Bruton has called for a further €2 billion in spending reductions next year. The government could start by introducing some of the more palatable measures in the McCarthy Report which has largely gone unimplemented. They could also introduce some of the savings proposed in Fine Gael’s Alternative Budget from last year.

“On the tax side, abolishing and curtailing some of the many tax shelters and exemptions could bring in hundreds of millions of euros in extra revenue. But increasing tax rates themselves would not be a good idea. The best way to increase tax revenues is to for growth in the economy and that means making Ireland’s economy competitive again by investing in infrastructure, reducing the cost of doing business, and getting the banks back to work.

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