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

I thank Deputy Kerrane of Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion, which we support. Any contribution to people who are being absolutely hammered with cost-of-living increases should be welcomed. We are happy to support the motion.

I want to set out what I believe needs to be a really comprehensive and radical package to deal with the inflation and cost-of-living crisis that people are enduring. There is a need for us to recognise that something is rotten in the way our economic system operates. If we do not get to the bottom of that, we are not going to either solve this problem or stop lurching from crisis to crisis, which is what we do. We do that because we allow the market to dictate what happens in our society, with commercial concerns coming before planning for the needs of society.

Consider the mess at Dublin Airport. That is a Covid-related supply chain bottleneck according to the Government. When it replies to our criticism, the Government says that it is not its fault and that it is a Covid-related supply chain bottleneck. This was what the Minister of State said What does that actually mean? I believe it is just jargon and rubbish to try to cover up what is actually happening. I will outline what it actually means. The CEO of the Dublin Airport Authority, DAA, was previously head of Brown Thomas. It baffles me what those two things have to do with each other. Somebody who used to run Brown Thomas is running the DAA. Another person who is running it is a former Goldman Sachs banker. They are running the DAA and during Covid they said they were going to get rid of 1,000 workers because not as many people were travelling as used to be the case. They decided to take advantage of that opportunity to get rid of people. They knew they would have to rehire them. When they knew it was time to do so, they would have taken a decision to give them absolutely rubbish contracts in order that they can have a workforce that can be turned on and off like a tap. They would also have to decided to guarantee those people only 20 hours' work a week but with the proviso that they must be on call for 40. Furthermore, they would have decided to pay them €14 per hour. Is it any wonder that people are not exactly jumping over themselves for those jobs or that the DAA has a problem retaining people in them? The DAA wants to hire people but does not want to pay them properly. It wants a workforce it can turn on and turn off. That is what a supply chain bottleneck looks like. It is people running our most important piece of national transport infrastructure on a for-profit basis at the expense of the workers who are needed to make the place function. The workers are treated like dirt, which is phrased as being "flexible", but, of course, eventually workers just do not want to do that. The people at the top have awarded themselves packages of €366,000 in pay and pension entitlements. They have also decided to run two airports down in Saudi Arabia for one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world, and are setting up duty-free shops all over the world. This is because they are interested in money. They are not interested in making our infrastructure work; they are interested in money.

Does this sound familiar in the context of some of the other things affecting the cost of living, such as, for example, the cost of housing, accommodation and rent? The people running that sector are interested in making money out of it. If there is a shortage of housing, they actually make more money. In fact, they have absolutely no interest in creating a situation where there might be either a sufficient supply or and excess of housing. Why would they possibly do that when, if they did, they would not make as much money? That is how our housing sector works.

One can also go through the list of areas where it is about people making money rather than supplying food, as was just mentioned. Our entire system of agriculture has been set up to supply export markets, which is a global market-led approach, rather than meeting the need for food and a diversity of food supply, which would be necessary to deliver locally-produced food of all types to the people of this country on a sustainable and secure basis. No. We are geared up for the market and we are geared up for the beef barons and certain people who control the dairy sector to make money. It does not work for the producers and it does not work for the ordinary consumers, but by God does it work for the beef barons, for Tesco and for all of the rest of them. That is the elephant in the room. While ordinary people are hammered with the cost-of-living crisis, Tesco's profits, energy companies' profits, Shell's profits, BP's profits and corporate profits generally in Ireland are all through the roof. That is what is going on. Inflation is not some sort of interesting economic phenomenon. Inflation is about making money for the people who control the things that we need to make our society function.

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