Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I put it to the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, that while the Government has put in place welcome measures to mitigate the cost of living, they do not in any way go far enough. We can see this with energy costs and the cost of food and so on. This crisis impacts the least well-off in society who are on low incomes and fixed payments. When people must resort to food banks we have a huge problem. In any society, especially Ireland which is a very wealthy country, to have people resorting to food banks is a complete and utter failure of the Government.

In times of crisis there are people who do very well. The best example would be the energy companies and the very wealthy in this State. The wealthy in this State have never had it so good. Energy companies have never had it so good. One does not have to be a Bolshevik to explain this. If there was ever a time for a windfall tax on energy companies, it is now.

There should be no equivocation. These companies are making obscene amounts of money, yet people struggle to pay bills. I do not think anybody in the Government could defend this policy, but there seems to be equivocation from Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and, disappointingly, the Green Party. Even the Tories are now talking about windfall taxes on large companies that are making a vast amount of money.

If we want to focus on something even more obscene, it is that the nine richest people in Ireland added €15 billion to their wealth during the pandemic. In the past 18 months, they have become even more wealthy. What does that say? The Government could introduce a wealth tax and bring money back to society for the common good. I do not think that is a hugely radical proposal. It is common sense. Working people are in a continuous economic survival mode in terms of obtaining decent pay, decent conditions, health services, education and so forth. That has always been the case. The fault lines were exposed, not only during the pandemic but during this crisis. Once there is an in-built social inequality and class system, there will always be inequalities whereby the wealthy do extremely well while the working people struggle.

If people cannot live, they will resist. We have seen throughout history that when people cannot feed their children, they go on to the streets. When that happens, anything is possible. I ask the Minister to give that warning to the Government. People are extremely angry and frustrated. They literally cannot feed their families.

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