Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

Does the Taoiseach agree the first five percentage points wage increase over a 15-month period which is provided for in the social partnership document Towards 2016 has been wiped out before it has been implemented, given the annual rate of inflation for March registered at 5.1%? Can he give us one good reason why workers should tolerate being constrained to these wage limits when the Government has added more than anybody else to inflation with increases in utilities and public service charges running at 9.3%, and the Alice in Wonderland policy in regard to electricity prices implemented by the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources whereby the regulator, acting on Government policy, has massively increased electricity prices to consumers in order to bring competitors into the market so prices will go down some time in the dim and distant future?

My second question I have tried to ask many times over ten years but the Taoiseach has never answered it satisfactorily. Now that we are in the dying days of the 29th Dáil——

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