Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The cost-of-living crisis continues to bear down hard on working people and their families. Barnardos told us last week that one in ten of those surveyed had been forced to go to a food bank in order to provide. Nearly three in ten were skipping meals to ensure their children could eat. The following day, we were told by Kantar that grocery bills are set to rise by nearly €1,200, on average, per household this year. Gas has increased 140% in the past two years and electricity by 115% in the same period, yet when families received their gas bills in January, they were shocked to see they were the highest they ever got, after the cold spell before Christmas.

What we should be discussing is the need for an emergency budget, one which would see major increases in the basic social welfare payments, and not on a one-off basis; a major increase in the national minimum wage; and pay increases for working people across the board, at least in line with inflation. The Government might ask how would pay for that. The State has a surplus of €5 billion. Let us look beyond that. We were recently told by Oxfam that there are two billionaires in this State who between them have more wealth than the poorest 50% of the population, yet the Government refuses to countenance the idea of a wealth tax. At the very least, the bottom line for this week must be that there will be no cuts in any of the household cost-of-living supports. The Government says the price of diesel is going down at the petrol pumps and that perhaps the changes could be reversed in that regard, but it turns a blind eye to the fact that the prices are skyrocketing in the supermarkets. A cut in any of these supports will be opposed by our group and should be resisted within society.

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