Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

What has happened with energy prices is fundamental to the cost-of-living increases. There is a real connection. It is not just about energy; there is also the potential increase in the cost of food. There are other reasons, including supply chain issues coming out of Covid, but the war in Ukraine and what Russia is doing is central to the cost-of-living issue.

I make that point because I believe that, in addressing the cost-of-living issue and the housing crisis, we need to use this moment of real emergency to effect change in both to help address both. When we are addressing the housing crisis, we now also have to house some 700 people coming into the country per day. We have to give sanctuary to them, quite correctly, like every other country in the EU. Can we do that in ways that really double down and accelerate what we need to do for our own people anyway? I refer to tackling vacant sites, opening up new rental streams and building really quickly. Can we use this emergency to provide solutions that are not just good for the Ukrainian families we have to help and protect but also for Irish families? I believe that we can do so. In a moment of emergency like this, we have to act fast and we have to be bold. The solutions for the Ukrainian refugee issue will help us domestically as well and that is what we should aim to do.

Similarly, when it comes to the cost of living, reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and going all out in terms of what we already know we need to do for the climate transition, including retrofitting, reforming the market, incentivising people to make the switch, pushing sustainable mobility and pushing a different type of agriculture that means we are not spending so much on fertilisers, all make sense.

In that way, we can stop giving money to Mr. Putin's government and start keeping it here at home. We can also achieve two objectives, to address the cost of living and the war challenges, and that is what this Government is going to do.

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