Dr. Tom McDonnell:

The very fact that we had to do the once-off payments was evidence that we did not have the system of indexation and benchmarking in place that could have easily responded to an increase in inflation by simply uplifting the rates, including minimum wages and all of that. We did not have that, and we had to go with an untargeted approach of “Let us give everybody something because it is very popular to do that”. Even if someone was on €500,000 and had net wealth of €10 million, they were still going to get the same amount, even if they were never going to spend it. I understand why that was done. It was done for political reasons, but it was a wasteful response. Instead of genuinely protecting people at the bottom, there was this idea that we were all worse off so we had to cut taxes instead. That was very frustrating because, on some level, they must have known cynically that those tax cuts were going to have an impact on deprivation and poverty.

We know what the measures are. We know it is about income and it is also about universal basic services. If we decommodify and make available things like childcare, make housing cheaper and make education and health actually free, all of these things can reduce the cost of living, and that works too. I could also mention free schoolbooks and free school dinners. It is not necessarily always about rates. Those types of measures are particularly useful. There is a concern in many countries that people will not actually avail of the payments they are entitled to, so those types of measures that everybody gets - that decommodification or that removing of the market - helps people as well.

Ultimately and fundamentally, the Covid crisis and the cost-of-living crisis have shown us that we do not have adequate systems in place to deal with these types of events. We could throw money at the first one - at that type of shock - and those measures were absolutely justified. For the second one, we had no answer.

We gave everyone energy credits. However, we do not have a proper system in place to stop deprivation from increasing, as it has in the past two years. That is a policy failure. We want deprivation to get down to as close to zero as possible. The only way we can do that is by providing adequate minimum incomes for everyone in society.