The uppity self-employed? Just who do they think they are?

Three years ago, Brendan Dempsey of Cork's St Vincent de Paul society, said: "National hari-kari was being performed on the backbone of Irish society". Would that 'backbone' be our top civil servants? Politicians? Bankers, judges or members of various quangos and departments that 'run' the country?

Nope. Dempsey was talking about the people at the very bottom of Irish society, for whom there are no safety nets, no redundancy payments, Christmas bonuses, pensions, holiday pay or unemployment benefit; he was talking about the people who come into his office crying, desperate, embarrassed because they literally have no-one else to turn to for help. He was talking about the self-employed.

But everyone loves to hate the self-employed don't they? Sure aren't they creaming it off the system, paying no tax and charging everything from drinks parties to holidays abroad on 'expenses'? (Nope, we're not. I think you may have us mixed up with that FAS crowd). Sadly, unlike, say our esteemed judges, some of whom, it was reported this week, claimed a total of €1.67m in expenses, the self-employed have to pay for everything themselves. Sure, they can write a little off against tax - but far less than most people seem to think.

Last week, the Government continued the popular trend of keeping their foot firmly placed on the heads of those uppity self-employed. The Universal Social Charge was increased from 7pc to 8pc for PAYE workers earning over €70,000, but for those stupid enough to be self-employed yet successful enough to be earning over €100,00 it was raised to 11pc.

How in any economic universe can this be considered a fair and equitable treatment of citizens? And yes, I am myself at the bottom rung of the self-employed ladder - but, having never created a job for anyone but me (and that is still part-time while I work unpaid as a stay-at-home-mother), I'm about as far away from that €100,000 figure as a politician is from a future of pension-less penury. But I still know that to raise the charge on one earner and not another is deeply unfair, no matter what they are earning.

Low-earning self-employed workers are already discriminated against because of the tax credit given to PAYE workers but not to self-employed. Then there's the top rate of marginal tax for self-employed, which is 55pc instead of the 52pc for PAYE workers. And (as the Government yawningly agrees is terribly unfair - but completely fails to address), the fact remains that the self-employed are entitled to nothing, nada, if the work they fought so hard to create stops coming in the door. They'd actually be better off if they had never worked a day in their lives.

Of course, as is so often pointed out by the Government, if a person is really starving then they are entitled - even if self-employed - to a few bob to keep the kids from falling over with the hunger. But it has to be fought for. Desperately. Humiliatingly. Read political commentator Johnny Fallon's heartbreaking account of fighting with the Department of (so-called) Social Protection for a year in order to receive a benefit his family was entitled to - and needed to survive - when work dried up for up him (johnnyfallon.wordpress.com - 'How my own struggles helped me care about those with depression').

In 2012, the ESRI report on household wealth/poverty showed that nearly half of what we call the "working poor" are self-employed. Hilariously, the report concluded that the "working poor" was not a particularly disadvantaged group because many are self-employed and have a third-level education. Amazingly, unlike in the public sector, having extra qualifications as a self-employed person doesn't automatically entitle you to extra dosh. You still have to earn it.

We really don't like the entrepreneurial type in Ireland do we? We drag them down at every opportunity. Fail again, fail better? Nah, those words might have come from an Irishman but here we prefer if you want to risk "failing again" then feck off and do it somewhere else. This is despite the fact that some 99.8pc of Irish firms are SMEs and 69pc of private-sector employees work for an SME.

Yet, to listen to the Government, you'd think that the only jobs created in this country came via multi-nationals. Why is this? Is hobnobbing with the CEO of Apple sexier than acknowledging that Jimmy in Sligo is taking a risk and putting all his cash into a new business with just five employees? Those five jobs add up when repeated all over the country you know, and Jimmy doesn't have to be given sweetheart deals that amount to State aid to prevent him relocating to India. Is it because Jimmy is Irish and we only like entrepreneurs from overseas? Is it something to do with our colonial past (yawn) and continuing need to be dependent on outside intervention? Or is it just basic begrudgery?

We don't like risk-takers in this country - they seem arrogant, self-confident, full of themselves. And when they fail, we excoriate them and say that they deserve everything they get - because they got "carried away", "forgot where they came from", "lost the run of themselves", thought they were "somebody" . . .

But if you work within the system, for the public sector, then you can pretty much do what you like and no one will ever fire you - or suggest your work isn't quite up to scratch. You may even be rewarded like the media-shy head of Irish Water, John Tierney, who was Dublin city manager when its waste-collection services were sold to Greyhound, and also presided over the €80m Poolbeg fiasco. Was he sent to languish for a year in an apartment in Swansea for his failure and return chastened to start afresh? Nah, he was handed the plum job at the top of the new water quango, earning €200,000 pa. And we've seen what a success he's made of that.

Culturally we prefer the fellow who lands himself a good, pensionable, expenses-paid, and lots of 'entitlements' added-on sort-of-job. If you can't get elected as a TD - the ultimate in winning the entitlement Lotto - then you can always get yourself a job in a quango like Irish Water (or Bord Gais), where what a dictionary would call a bonus is renamed a "performance related work scheme".

That's the sort of thing we respect in Ireland. What the self-employed would describe, accurately, as money for nothing.

Problem is - someone has to pay for this stuff. And that someone is you.

@carolmhunt