Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We have the context of the Oxfam wealth report and the upcoming Davos meeting and, yet again, we find a report indicating the gap between a tiny group of the richest people in the world and the vast majority has widened to shocking and obscene levels, with 1% of the population owning 82% of all wealth. Oxfam cites in particular the erosion of worker rights and government policy and decision making, as well as the failure of corporations to pay proper taxes, as the factors responsible for this shocking rise in inequality. That is mirrored here, with record numbers of millionaires cited in recent reports, along with two additional billionaires, with some of those, interestingly, involved with construction and property areas.

On the other hand, there is a massive housing crisis arising from the fact that people's wages are not sufficient to buy housing on the open market. Construction workers do not want to work in construction because they will have to put up with zero-hour contracts, as has been mentioned. From day to day and week to week, those people do not know how many days or weeks they will be working. Their pay and conditions are not sufficient even to buy the houses they are building. Not surprisingly, we do not have the capacity in the form of workers to build houses for people. Does this give the Taoiseach pause for thought about the need to address income and wealth inequality in this country and, very specifically, to deal with the matter of zero-hour contracts?

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