Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government acknowledges that inflation, in particular the type of inflation that we have at the moment, which is very much driven by higher energy prices, is impacting on those with lower incomes more so than those with higher incomes. That is clear. People on lower incomes spend more on energy and fuel, or a higher percentage of their income on energy, fuel and groceries than those on higher incomes. As a consequence of that - the Deputy is right about this - inflation impacts on different households in different ways. At the moment, inflation is impacting more seriously on lower income households than higher income households. In recognition of that, in the budget we did increase core social welfare rates. We also increased the fuel allowance, the living alone allowance and the child dependant allowance. We did those things precisely because it was the lowest incomes that were impacted most. As I said earlier, we acknowledge that more needs to be done. We are working on those proposals now. I hear the Deputy’s proposal for an increase in core social welfare rates. The difficulty with that is that a lot of working people are not on social welfare. Deputy Doherty might not appreciate this, but people who are working hard, who earn middle incomes or who might look like they have good incomes on paper, also have to deal with the high cost of living and his proposal would exclude them.

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