Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I think insane competition at every level in the banking sector contributed enormously to banks encouraging people to speculate, for example, on buy-to-let mortgages, including people who should never have got into that. That is one example. There are many others, but we will agree to disagree on that.

I will ask about the Central Bank's warning to the Government about not taking budgetary measures that could contribute to excessive demand and therefore to inflation. Does Mr. Makhlouf not think it would be better to look at what we mean by demand, including whose demand and what type of demand? Would it be fair to say that supply, in terms of the current shock, is a more important factor? I will explain what I mean. First, the explanation for the current cost-of-living crisis for ordinary people - I do not know whether Mr. Makhlouf agrees with it - has to do with something called supply chain bottlenecks. These are decisions made by producers of goods, such as corporations, companies, energy companies and so on, to reduce the supply of goods. Similarly, in the area of property, those who have taken over or bought up huge sections of the property market have been manipulating supply in order to keep up the value of their investments and, therefore, rents, property prices and so on. I question, therefore, a warning against measures - because that is how it will be translated and has been translated in popular discourse - which might compensate people for the loss of earnings and loss of income they have suffered. For the vast majority of workers, pensioners and students, the problem is not that they are spending too much. It is that they have lost the ability, in some cases, to put food on the table or pay the rent.

There would be nothing inflationary about just taking measures to compensate them to ensure they had not lost income. I worry that the narrative comes out that the Government must not do things to fuel inflation and that translates in popular debate that the we must not give the workers pay increases or increase social welfare or pension rates because, God, that would contribute to inflation. The underlying assumption there is that people getting paid too much or people getting excessive social welfare created the inflationary problem but it has not. Is it not a fair comment to say that it has not created it at all and in fact quite the opposite is happening to the majority of people? There may be luxury demand that is being boosted. If a lot of someone's income is derived from, say, bank shares, then that person might be doing very well. They might be buying more champagne, going out to more luxury restaurants or buying more expensive cars and, sure, we could reign in that kind of demand, but we should distinguish between different types of demand and ask whether it is the spending of ordinary people that has created this mess or whether it is manipulations by some big corporate interests who actually control supply.