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

As the Ministers know, we are very consistent in that regard. We think the Government has to spend more but needs to raise it elsewhere. There is general acceptance and acknowledgement that those who are less well-off and on lower incomes, and even people on modest incomes, have been disproportionately hit by the cost-of-living crisis, whether it is the proportion they have to spend on putting food on the table or on putting a roof over their head, paying energy bills or other basic needs families have. The lower your income is, the worse you have been hit by energy price hikes and by increases in rent, mortgage interest rates, grocery costs and so on.

The Ministers’ central narrative is they have huge budget surpluses but that it would be imprudent to spend surpluses from revenues that are potentially volatile in the medium to long term, so we should not do it. They also state it would be inflationary to throw lots of money around, given capacity constraints and so on. However, is it not reasonable to say compensating lower and medium-income households would not be inflationary because it would simply ensure they maintain the level of buying power they had before the cost-of-living crisis took off? It would be entirely fair to families being hammered by that crisis, but also prudent within the terms the Ministers set out, to ensure people are not losing income in real terms. There is no reason to believe that would be inflationary, particularly if they gave income increases to pensioners, social welfare recipients or workers in the pay talks, while dealing with the inflationary concerns they have by taking it from those on very high incomes or who have accumulated and are accumulating significant wealth in the current situation.

I asked the Central Bank about this in the finance committee recently. Its net household wealth figures are always quite helpful. It points to the fact that net household wealth has again increased dramatically but is highly concentrated. It gave a note at the end of last year stating the wealthiest 10% have 54% of net household wealth. In other words, that 10% has more than the other 90%. Would it not be reasonable to make sure the majority of low- and middle-income people do not suffer and are given enough in increased income or pay that they are not worse off, taking that from those whose wealth has increased or who are not being severely impacted by the current crisis? There is a fair bit of evidence to suggest the people at the top are benefiting from the cost-of-living crisis because they have income derived from bank shares, shares in energy companies that are doing very well or corporations whose profits have gone through the roof. Would that not be a fair approach to take, and a prudent one? It would not cause inflation but would ensure the impact of the cost-of-living crisis is not put on the backs of ordinary working people, pensioners and those dependent on disability or social welfare payments.