Government to reveal four year deficit plan

Slashing the minimum wage, cutting social welfare payments, tax hikes, new charges and public sector job losses will be announced by Government today.
The long awaited four year deficit reduction plan will be unveiled this afternoon.
It’s been billed as the plan to save teh country from financial collapse and it’ll be made public later today.
The deficit reduction – totalling about 15 billion will be made up of spending cuts of about 10 billion and five billion euro in tax hikes – frontloading of 6 billion of teh adjustment will happen next year.
So what are teh austerity measures we can expect?
* Social Welfare cuts of 5% next year, with further cuts in the following years.
* Teh minimum wage will be cut by about 12% from its current 8.65 an hour
* A new property tax or service charge of between 100 and 200 euro a year
* Up to 20,000 public sector job cuts
* Raiding the pension reserve fund to try and create jobs
* And we’ll be paying income tax levels of 2006.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan and other Cabinet members will launch the plan later today – hoping it’ll convince the markets and return the economy to growth.