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

I thank Deputy Nash for tabling this motion on inflation and the cost of living. We are happy to support it. We will move two small but important amendments on the issue of introducing energy price caps and supporting workers who put in pay claims to keep their wages and income ahead of the galloping rate of inflation and rising cost of living. The inflation figures are bad enough if they are just taken on their own terms, at 5.7% in December, and they are expected to be above 4.5% next year. That means if people are only getting a 1% pay increase, they are taking a pay cut. Workers are taking a pay cut. I am on the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. It showed that the State contributory pension has nominal increases but the actual real value of the pension dropped by 2%, so pensioners are taking an income cut. That does not tell the whole story, because inflation figures are averages of the cost of living across the economy. The areas where it is much worse are those that really hit the people who can least afford it, who are the vulnerable, low-paid working people.

The area of housing is a disaster. People end up homeless as a result of the failure of this and previous Governments to control the price of rent and houses. We do not have time to go into the housing debate now, but it is outrageous that the Government refused to introduce a rent freeze. We would go further and introduce rent controls where the Government controls the rent that can be charged, so that rents are linked to incomes, and are affordable for people. That has to be done urgently. Rents increased by 8% last year and 8% the year before that. A critical point is that the income of landlords in that same period went up by 16%. This is a key point about inflation and the cost-of-living crisis. Rents, childcare costs and energy prices are going up and somebody is making money out of it. Landlords are creaming it. The Government's failure to control rents is not just impoverishing people who need housing, but it is enriching people who control the property sector.

This is a basic elementary truth about inflation. For inflation to go up, the producers of goods and services have to increase prices in order to increase their profits. Profits in this economy have shot through the roof. Ordinary workers are stuck on low pay. It is laughable for the Government to talk about high wage rates in this country. We have one of the highest levels of low pay anywhere in the western world. Some 370,000 workers are on low pay in the retail, private security, transport, health and manufacturing sectors. Many are on abysmally low levels of pay. They are poverty levels. The working poor are now being hammered by energy price hikes because of the profiteering of energy companies across the world and in this country. We need to control prices and rents. We need to support workers who are putting pay claims to keep ahead of the galloping rate of inflation.

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