No tax hike for low or middle paid says Labour

LABOUR in government would not increase tax rates for low and middle-income “hard-working” families, party leader Pat Rabbitte pledged.

"We will not do so because there is no need to do so," he said in his leader's address. "Economic growth of 5% per annum, on the back of our accumulated prosperity, would, by the end of the decade, generate an additional €12 billion in today's terms, without any increase in the burden of taxation."

A second reason why it would be wrong to hike taxes on such families, he said, was because there had been "wholesale, widespread, endemic tax evasion" by the elite in society.