Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Sinn Féin has been asking us to chase inflation from the beginning. That has been a consistent theme that it has been articulating since the beginning of the year. By the way, protecting the economy is protecting our people. Protecting jobs is protecting our people. We should not underestimate the economic recovery that has happened, which gives us some buffer - not a total one - for protecting people against what was predicted coming out of Covid. No one predicted that we would be at 2.5 million people working in the immediate aftermath of Covid-19. People thought that would take until 2024 to happen. Thankfully, the economy has rebounded much faster, but inflation is a huge pressure on people and it is largely driven by the energy strategy of Putin. He wants to sow discord across the West. He wants to create maximum pressure on western democracies through his energy policies, through his food policies - preventing grain from getting into Europe - and through migration pressures by terrorising people out of Ukraine. We cannot allow him to win the strategic battle that he is waging on us. When I said-----

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