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

Fine Gael is claiming the credit for that. Apologies. Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil - it does not make much difference in truth. It is the same to us. The idea was to have a State company, rather than leaving it to the private market to produce energy. A publicly owned company was created which operated on a not-for-profit basis. That is what needs to be done.

We also need to extend eligibility for the fuel allowance to the many pensioners and low-paid workers who are being absolutely crucified by energy costs. We need to dramatically reduce, or withdraw, carbon taxes. Why are tenants or low-paid workers who cannot afford, through their own resources, to retrofit their homes being punished for what other people are doing? Why are they being punished more than people who have the money to retrofit their homes? Those who have the money, as wealthy people do, can mitigate the cost of energy price hikes. It is the working people, the poor, the less well-off and public and private tenants who are being absolutely crucified by this and do not have the resources to do anything about it.

The Government should reduce the level of VAT, as the Spanish have done, and the PSO levies. Plenty of measures could be taken to deal with this. We also need to address the income inequalities which are being exacerbated by the inflation crisis, not just the 5.7% or 4.4% projected for next year because they are averages. Inflation is disproportionately higher for people who have to spend a larger proportion of their income on rent or keeping a roof over their head.

We need to provide wage increases to working people. I met a group of private security workers, a group we have not talked about much in the past while. They provide security in hospitals and on public transport. They work in all sorts of public and private buildings. They are earning €11.65 per hour. How is somebody supposed to live on that? They cannot get a miserable pay increase to bring them up to €12.05 per hour because of some ERO thing. Wages should be increased to a decent living wage like €15 per hour. Everybody should be given increases that at least match the rate of inflation so that they can cope with the increased cost of living being imposed on them.

As well as the energy side of things, we have to deal with the biggest cost for most people, which is putting a roof over their heads. That means introducing rent controls and not relying on the market to deliver housing supply, something it is proving to be completely incapable of doing. We need to deliver the scale of public affordable housing we need, which profit hungry private property investors are not willing or able to do.

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