Let’s end this 40-year-old tax fantasy of low-tax, high-hope economy

Forty years ago today the country went to the polls and gave Jack Lynch’s Fianna Fáil 84 seats, which represented a 20-seat Dáil majority, a level of autonomy that today’s administration must envy. 

That result, now seen as a corruption of democracy, was achieved by promises to abolish rates on private dwellings and to end road tax for most private motorists.

It is easy to excoriate Lynch for breaking the link between taxation and worthwhile public services but he could not have done that without the gullibility of a seduced, self-serving electorate. We are still paying a price today, if not financially, then in the greatly reduced capacity of governments to stand over the rational principle that if we want a service it has to be paid for. Or, as that idea was so succinctly expressed in Lynch’s time: “No bottles, no milk.”