Honohan: Poor hit hardest by economic crisis

The governor of the Central Bank has said the poor of Ireland have suffered the most during the economic crisis, reopening the debate as to who has been worst affected by five years of austerity.

Patrick Honohan’s hard- hitting assessment will fly in the face of current Government thinking, which aims to provide income tax relief for the so-called coping classes whom many ministers, including the Taoiseach, have said suffered substantially following a series of tax increases.

In his speech to a European Commission conference in Dublin yesterday, Mr Honohan said while the downturn has had a broadly similar effect on incomes across society, an equally proportionate reduction in incomes hits the lower income groups harder.