Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Yes. Mr. Barnes was saying we should not get into a wage-price spiral and to be careful about raising incomes to match inflation because then we could potentially be locking in expenditure that will fuel inflation and some of the price increases may be temporary and things come back down and so and so forth. Are council members worried about the other scenario, which is that if inflation stays at the sort of levels it is at now or even worsens, if it is greater than any compensatory measures like increases in income the Government provides through increases in wages, social welfare payments, pensions or whatever, that creates a danger of recession? Is that not equally problematic? Mr. Barnes indicated that he is slightly worried about consumer demand and so on. Is that not an equally big danger? Next year, as he acknowledged, people's incomes are going to be less in real terms. They are going to be losing out and surely that will have a knock-on impact on demand, that is, the amount of spending in the economy?