Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I was not really ready but anyway; it is grand. I thank Dr. McQuinn very much for his contribution. By the way, I commend the ESRI on its recent housing reports. I know it was a different team of people but they are very useful analyses of what is going on with the housing situation.

We in People Before Profit are of the view that we should control some of the prices of things that have increased very substantially; food and energy being two Dr. McQuinn cited as having seen disproportionately high increases, which are really hammering families and, as he pointed out, the less well-off in particular. We have seen very significant increases in other areas, however.

Of course, even before this inflationary spiral we are seeing now, perhaps Dr. McQuinn could comment on this, it seems fairly clear that the cost of many things people depend on was already higher in Ireland than it was in most of the rest of Europe. Our energy prices and childcare costs are considerably higher than the average in Europe. Our house prices and rents are very considerably higher and have seen much more dramatic increases over quite a long period than the rest of Europe.

Why would we not, therefore, try to control the price of some of these things, particularly if the ESRI seems to be suggesting that this inflationary spiral may be temporary? The ESRI seems to be saying the supply chain bottlenecks related to Covid-19 and then the sudden bounceback of the economy and the Ukraine crisis. Those are both kind of temporary things. If it is temporary, why would it not be a good idea, which we think it is, to control some of these prices now and set maximum prices on certain things in order that we do not get a continuation of the inflationary spiral?

If there is concern that people will start to put in wage demands, for example, that would, to use Dr. McQuinn's term, reinforce inflation, would it not it be entirely logical to try to actually control some the key areas in which we have seen prices go through the roof to prevent that inflationary spiral being perpetuated?