Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. Cassidy. I think there are important implications of this. In a globalised economy, the owners of the energy supplies are really the shareholders, who are not limited. The companies will be based in a particular country, whether that is BP or Shell in Britain or Aramco in Saudi Arabia, but people with additional wealth in this country buy shares in these companies. I often find the Central Bank's quarterly report at the beginning of the year fascinating, in which it shows the increases in household wealth, which have been pretty dramatic over the past ten years or so. Many households in this country would be stunned to hear that household wealth had increased dramatically year on year for the past decade or so, but the Central Bank's reports demonstrate that. That clearly indicates that very wealthy households have seen a very significant increase in their wealth. Some of that is property based, given the rise in the value of property, but if I read the report at the beginning of the year correctly, it indicated that many of those increases were accounted for by increases in financial assets, that is, shares, dividends, savings and all that kind of stuff.

The wealthiest households in this country - this is probably an international pattern - have seen their wealth increase greatly. Is it fair to say, therefore, that if they are shareholders in companies that are making significant profits, such as energy companies or arms companies, which have also been doing well recently, the inflation crisis is not a problem for them at all? The increasing value of their investments, if they have investments in companies such as petrol, energy or arms companies, means they actually are benefiting from the inflation crisis that is crucifying everybody else. Is that a fair comment?