Equality of Outcomes Missing from Discussion

Budget decisions are made within the constraints of the political-economic system. We note, for example that Equality Scheme commits DfI and other departments to determine if there are any impacts on “equality of opportunity” rather than a more substantive commitment to equality of outcomes.

We also note that, while Section 75 of the NI Act 1998 requires the Department to have due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity in relation to religious beliefs, racial background., age, marital status, different sexual orientations, different political opinions and others, there is no requirement to mitigate economic inequality, and indeed the idea of a government setting out to bring about substantive economic equality is almost laughable within the current set-up.

Economic Inequality

Research from 2022 by the Money and Pensions Service found that 31% of people in Northern Ireland had less than £100 in savings, of whom almost one in four (23%) had no savings. In their 2016 report on Economic inequality in Northern Ireland, researchers Tinson, Aldridge, and MacInnes note that “a minority of households account for the vast majority of household savings and inequality appears to be quite high”. The absence of ready cash among a third of our people crucially affects the degree to which they can avail of infrastructural services, primarily transport.

Inequality of Incomes

In relation to income, the UK is relatively unequal when compared to other European countries, and the median income (at which half of people are above and half are below) in Northern Ireland is £570 per week (£2,288 per month). As with Great Britain, in 2016 the bottom 30% of households in Northern Ireland accounted for 14% of total income. The top 30% accounted for 51% and the top 10% of Northern Irish households alone received 24% of all income.

Inequality of Wealth

Some recent academic research has found that in 2023 the richest 50 families in the UK had more wealth than the bottom half of the UK population (33.5 million people): both groups own £466 billion. The researchers also note that “while the super-rich … have never been wealthier, the UK government is poorer than at any time over the last 30 years”. The researchers say that a tax of 4% on the wealth of the richest 50 families each year would raise enough to give all public sector workers (5.5 million people) a standard of living preserving pay rise of 10.5%”.

Part of the monies raised by a wealth tax could be used to right “the historic underfunding the Department [for Infrastructure] has faced for many years”. Monies currently in the coffers of what is essentially an oligarchy could be used to create a world-class public transport system throughout Northern Ireland, to clean up Lough Neagh, to fix our increasingly crumbling school infrastructure, to modernise water provision, and to provide funding for other aspects of the Department for Infrastructure Resource Budget.

Capitalist Monopolies

In relation to financial inequality, we should also mention Swiss research from 2011, which found that 40% of the control over the economic value of Transnational Corporations (TNCs) in the world is held, via a complicated web of ownership relations, by a group of 147 ‘core’ TNCs. “The top holders within the core can …be thought of as an economic ‘super-entity’ in the global network of corporations”. Three-quarters of these ‘super-entity’ companies are financial intermediaries. A commitment to substantive economic democracy would make us look into the extent to which businesses belonging to this super-entity shape and control the economy and infrastructure of Northern Ireland.

A commitment to substantive equality of economic outcomes

Timson and colleagues recommend that “distributional analysis should become mainstream in Northern Ireland government decision-making, and should be published where appropriate”. The Workers Party agrees, and we would go further in stating that equality impact assessment by the DfI and other departments should be based on a commitment to all the equality issues outlined in Section 75 of the NI Act 1998, and a crucial additional commitment to a substantive equality of economic outcomes.