Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I will speak to what should be but is not in the Finance Bill. Inflation and prices have risen this month, despite the Government’s assurances that inflation would reduce during the year and its decisions to start removing the few supports people had to help them during the cost-of-living crisis. The Government seems to think that fiddling around with VAT and excise rates, while removing the payments that were vital for many to scrape by this winter, is enough for the thousands of people around this country who have seen their wages and savings decimated by the massive increases we have seen in food and energy prices. Prices are still going up and energy companies are still not passing on the drop in the price of wholesale energy. Many people are now looking down the barrel of eviction from rented properties or major increases in their mortgages as the ECB continues to increase interest rates. Wage growth during this crisis has hovered at about 4% while inflation has reached almost 10%, with food prices increasing by 16%. A wage rise below inflation is a wage cut. That is if one is even lucky enough to get that. Hundreds of thousands of people were struggling to get by before the cost-of-living crisis. Now we are in a worse situation, yet the Government is offering people nothing in real terms. There will be no further supports, as the Minister announced, until budget 2024.

The Government ignored calls from groups like Age Action and Social Justice Ireland for proper increases for those receiving social welfare. The increases in the most recent budget were just over half of what people needed just to stand still. The Government failed to listen to calls to extend the fuel allowance to those in receipt of working family payments and has for years ignored calls to have a social welfare system properly benchmarked to a decent standard of living and properly indexed to inflation.

The once-off payments, while welcome, did not do nearly enough to combat the sheer immiseration people were subjected to during a decade of austerity caused by the greed of the big banks and now during a cost-of-living crisis caused by the greed of big energy corporations.

We heard the Taoiseach back in February saying we did not have the finances to implement more support for people this spring. This is despite the fact the Government has €5 billion in budget surpluses and has dragged its feet time and again on implementing a windfall tax on the corporations whose skyrocketing excess profits have caused the inflation and price increases. As other Deputies have done, I call on the Minister to provide a timeline setting out when the relevant legislation will be introduced in the House.

Almost 250,000 people on tracker mortgages are seeing their monthly payments balloon every month as the ECB increases its interest rate. The average tracker mortgage has increased by €1,600 over the past eight months. In the near future, we will see more than 50,000 people coming off fixed rate mortgages and their yearly payments could rise by as much as €6,000 a year.

People are struggling to pay rent and mortgages, pay for food and keep their houses warm. When will they get the extra help they need or, as it has done with the eviction ban, will the Government let thousands of people fall off a cliff?

The Government stated that ending the eviction ban and having thousands of people potentially face homelessness was in the public interest. It is leaving thousands of people to struggle to keep their homes warm and keep food on the table, while the corporations, which have made billions of euro off the crisis, are allowed to walk away and get off the hook. Is that also in the public interest?

See this speech in context