The top 1% of Irish society now holds €232bn or more than a quarter of Ireland's wealth, according to an Oxfam report published to coincide with the World Economic Forum at Davos.
The top 10% owns close to two-thirds (64%) of the country's wealth or €547bn, while the bottom 50% holds just 1% or €9bn, which is less than the two richest people combined (€15bn), the Survival of the Richest report shows using data from Forbes, Credit Suisse and wealth data company Wealth-X.
The number of Irish people with individual wealth in excess of €46.6m ($50m) has more than doubled since 2012, from 655 to 1,435. A further 20,575 individuals each hold over €4.7m ($5m), and Ireland now have eight billionaires.
Although the eight billionaires represents a drop from nine since 2012, the number of individuals in each of the other two categories ($50m and $5m) has more than doubled in the past decade, increasing by 119% and 118%, respectively.
Similarly, for every €93.15 ($100) of wealth created in the past 10 years, €31.67 ($34) has gone to the richest 1% and 50 cent to the bottom 50%, meaning the richest have gained 70 times more wealth than the poorest half in the past decade.
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“This rising wealth at the top and rising poverty for the rest are two sides of the same coin, proof that our economic system is functioning exactly how the rich and powerful designed it to.
“It was 10 years ago when we first sounded the alarm about extreme inequality at the World Economic Forum and yet since then the world’s billionaires have almost doubled their wealth," said Jim Clarken, CEO of Oxfam Ireland.
"As crisis after crisis hits the poorest people hardest, it’s time for governments, including Ireland’s, to tax the rich. The very existence of billionaires while out-of-control inequality rises, is damning proof of policy failure.”
The charity has urged the introduction of a wealth tax at graduated rates of 2%, 3% and 5% above a threshold of €4.7m, which it said would raise €8.2bn.
'Survival of the Richest' also shows that, for the first time in a quarter of a century, that inequality is growing, with the richest 1% globally having acquired nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world combined.
Oxfam highlighted that Jeff Bezos effectively paid 1% tax from 2014 to 2018 while the World Bank's goal of ending extreme poverty, ie those living on less than $2.15 per day, by 2030 has fallen out of reach.
Furthermore, Oxfam's research states that 'crisis profiteering' is responsible for 50-80% of the cost of living increases in the US and Europe, and the charity has called for a tax on the wealth of the richest 1% at rates high enough to redistribute these resource.
It wants to halve the wealth and numbers of billionaires by the end of 2030 in the hopes of ultimately abolishing extreme inequality.
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