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

I thank the Deputy. I was interested to hear him cite the US. Many economists, including ones from both left and right, would say one of the reasons the US is facing such high levels of inflation, that are much higher than what we are experiencing here, is at least in part due to the level of spending by government there through the fiscal stimulus and also the extent to which the Federal Reserve has printed dollars through quantitative easing.

The exact policies the Deputy advocates are being implemented in America and have caused inflation. The 1970s is an important decade to cite because it is what we want to avoid. That was a period of high inflation, high pay rises and lots of strikes. That might be the type of decade the Deputy wants, but it is not the decade we want. We want to ensure over the course of the next decade that there is continued incremental progress, with people getting pay rises that are meaningful and that do not get swallowed up by inflation. That is why we must look at this in the round and try to come up with a package that means, first, that pay rises are increases that people can keep because taxes are not too high and, second, that we bring prices under control so people can benefit from the pay rises they get.

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