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

The simple fact about the situation for the vast majority of people on middle and low incomes, working people, or people dependent on pensions or social welfare is that they will be worse off next year than they were this year.

This is the fundamental fact. As much as the Government may try and bedazzle people with a long list of measures it has taken to try to mitigate the absolutely diabolical cost-of-living and housing crisis that people face, this is the fact. The official rate of inflation is running at 8.1% but, of course, as everybody that examines these matters, such as the ESRI, has made clear, the inflation rate for people on lower incomes is higher. It is the highest for those who have the least because they spend most of their income on the things that have seen shocking increases in cost and price, whether food, energy or housing. The people who have the least are suffering the most. The vast majority of people will be poorer next year than they were this year. Meanwhile there is another group of people for whom it will be much better next year. It was better for them this year than it was last year and it was better last year than the year before. This is the truth that is never mentioned in these debates.

There are a few facts in this regard that are worth putting on the record. Energy poverty in this country is at an all-time high of 29% of the population. It is shocking to think that just under one third of the population is suffering from energy poverty. It is estimated that if current trends of energy cost increases continue this figure will increase to 43%. This is almost double its previous recorded high of 23% in 1994 and 1995. If this trend continues, just under half of the population will soon suffer energy poverty. More generally, according to Social Justice Ireland when housing costs are taken into account, 19% of the population is living in poverty or on the poverty line. This is 935,000 people, including 300,000 children. Almost one in five of the population lives on or below the poverty line when energy and housing costs are taken into account.

It is a very different story for others. The median pay package of top CEOs last year increased by 42% to an average of €2 million each in pay. Oxfam stated in a report produced earlier this year that the wealth of Ireland's nine richest billionaires increased in just one year by €15 billion. This is not how much they have; this is how much their wealth increased in one year. That brought the total wealth of nine individuals to €51 billion. We cannot even imagine how rich these people are. A report on the pay of directors for Irish companies shows that many of them recorded maximum bonus payments in 2021. While everybody else was getting poorer and being hammered with the cost-of-living and housing crisis the directors of companies, or most of them, received massive bonus payments. Last year, the average non-executive director, which is basically a part-time job sitting in on a few board meetings, was paid on average €107,000. The average for executive directors was close to €1 million for sitting on a company board. Look at how well these companies were doing while other people were being crushed.

Electric Ireland made an additional €63 million in 2021, with profits reaching €679 million, yet in March this year it announced price increases of almost 25% and further increases in August of 11% for electricity and 32% for gas. That affects 1.2 million households. Bord Gais operating profits grew 74% in the first half of 2022 to €39.4 million. In the previous year, they were only €19 million. Bord Gais increased its prices twice in September 2021. Its domestic customers now pay an average of €760 more for electricity and €573 more for gas than last year. Overall estimates suggest that over the past year and next year most households will have lost between €4,000 and €6,000 in real terms because of the rise in the cost of living, housing costs and inflation. These are savage income cuts in real terms.

It is also briefly worth mentioning the wealth figures. The richest 5% of people in this country amount to 93,000 households. Between them this group has €388 billion. It may be of interest to the public out there that net household wealth in this country has now reached more than €1 trillion for the first time. We are the fourth richest country in the world. There is a problem with the distribution of that wealth. According to TASC and the only study the Government did on this in recent years in 2017, the richest 10% of our population own 53% of the wealth but the least well off 50% of the population has 1.4% of the wealth. The average wealth of the richest 93,000 households in this country is €4 million whereas we have one fifth of the population living in poverty and this situation is getting worse.

Against this background what did the Government do in the budget to address the situation? It provided a 5% increase for pensioners and social welfare recipients, which is €12 per week. According to Social Justice Ireland the necessary level of income per week to be sure of not suffering poverty is €286. The weekly pension went from €253 to €265. This is €21 short of the poverty line. This is the reality. While we are thinking about this, let us not forget about the 93,000 richest households, which have €4 million each in wealth, never mind income. The vast majority of those dependent on the State pension are, in effect, living in poverty or a very close to it. We have a 5% increase when inflation is officially running at 8% but in actuality is approximately 9% or more for those low-income households that spend most of their income on food and heating. There is no change to the basic rates of fuel allowance, living alone allowance, domiciliary care allowance, carer's support grant, back to school clothing and footwear allowance or child benefit.

Many people went out on the Cost of Living Coalition protest in advance of the budget.

There is no doubt the Minister was changing the figures over that weekend because we managed to get 20,000 people out on the streets. She was put under pressure and we got some one-off payments. I am sure everybody will be glad of those payments, but they are going to disappear into the pockets of the CEOs and executive board directors and the profits of the companies I mentioned. All that money is heading into their pockets. It will be gone come the new year. By the end of the winter months, the reality will kick in that, in terms of a basic income, people received less than the rate of inflation and the rises in the cost of living. They will be poorer next year than they were last year. That will be the reality once those one-off payments disappear. None of this would be necessary if there was a willingness to make a small increase in the tax burden of companies and extraordinary wealthy households that have become more extraordinarily wealthy and profitable in the past year or two and redirect that towards ensuring nobody in this country lives in poverty, everybody can afford a roof over their head and heating and food prices are affordable. That is the big picture as far as I am concerned. A few sticking plasters will not deal with the gaping wound of deprivation, poverty, housing misery and energy poverty that huge numbers of people are experiencing.

Beyond those general points, I will make a few specific points. A child over 16 years may be entitled to a disability payment while he or she is at school. However, I discovered that if the mother applies for the back to school clothing and footwear allowance for the child going back to school, she will be refused the allowance, unbelievably, because the child is getting a disability payment. Just so the Minister knows, the mother is not allowed to take the disability payment off her child. The child gets the disability payment because he or she has a disability and he or she is entitled to it. That is the child's income. The idea that the mother does not get money for the back-to-school costs, because the child is on a disability payment, is frankly obscene. This needs to be addressed immediately. It is shocking and, in reality, it is a form of discrimination against people with a disability.

The husband of a very unwell woman came into my clinic. She is ten years on illness benefit. The rules around illness benefit were changed in 2009 so that a person could only be on it for two years. Prior to that, there were long-term recipients of illness benefit. When that change came in, people were given the option to stay on illness benefit if they thought it was the best payment for them, and this woman did so. As a result, even though she has been on that payment for ten years, she has been denied the fuel allowance all those years. She was also denied the one-off cost-of-living payment of €400, and I have received replies to parliamentary questions to that effect. In case the department official is passing a note to the Minister saying the woman can apply for other allowances, she did that and was denied them both.

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