Ms Louise Bayliss:

It would be in massive ways. When we look at who is looking for help from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, it is people who live alone. These are adults who live alone, such as pensioners with only one income, or lone parents and their children. Social welfare does not protect children in income inadequacy. The MESL report brought out by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul just last month showed with regard to social protection income inadequacy that children aged over 12 get only 66% of their needs met, as opposed to every other group getting a much higher percentage of needs met. A parent reliant on social welfare will not get these needs met.

We see the same people accessing support from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. We speak about the cost-of-living crisis as if it were over. In our most recent figures, for June, we saw an 8% increase in requests for help from June this year compared with last year. The increase in the cost of a shopping basket is very real for the people we support and it is getting worse for them. While inflation looks like it is decreasing from the high of 9.2%, the majority of costs for people on low incomes are on the essential needs in a shopping basket and they are really suffering. We can see it in our daily work.