Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Many people will be scratching their heads today and in the next number of months asking how come we have a supposedly giveaway bonanza budget and yet the vast majority of ordinary people will be worse off next year. More people will be cold and hungry. More people will be energy poverty. Do not take it from me; take it from Mr. Cliff Taylor, who wrote in The Irish Timesthat "living standards will fall on average by about 3 per cent this year and 2 per cent next year". The answer is because the crises we face are systemic crises. I refer to the cost-of-living, housing and climate and biodiversity crises. There is systemic crisis rooted in profiteering and the capitalist system, which is based around organising our economy to maximise that profiteering. It is the profiteering of the fossil fuel corporations without regard to our planet or our people's needs, of the energy and food companies in this country and of the big landlords and developers. Their interests and their profits are taking priority. The centrepieces of the Government's budget continue in exactly the same vein. They do not challenge that profiteering in the slightest. Instead, they continue with it.

With the electricity credit, for example, and the temporary business energy support scheme, without price controls and without nationalisation of the energy sector, the Government is just creating a vast flow of public money through the hands of people into the pockets of energy companies.

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