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

Yes, the Taoiseach is right. There is no conspiracy; it is naked, brazen greed. The Taoiseach's answer does not explain how the number of people with more than €50 million or the number of people with up to €5 million in personal wealth has doubled. It does not explain how corporate profits have trebled in the last ten years while ordinary people are suffering. Let me give the Taoiseach an example, just one of dozens that I encountered over Christmas and the new year, of a woman and her husband with an income of €500 per week from invalidity pension and half carer's allowance. The husband has Alzheimer's disease. When they got a housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancy, he was working. Five years later, the rent has increased and those people now pay €275 a week of a contribution to rent from the €500 they have in total. They cannot make ends meet. Her rent was due on 13 January and she cannot pay. She has a gas bill of €700 unpaid and a new one to arrive later this month. Apparently, when she looked for an exceptional needs payment, she was told "No" because she had received two payments last year. This is the reality that ordinary people are facing. What Oxfam pointed out was that the gross and growing inequality in wealth had a lot to do with what it called "greedflation", profiteering by big corporations-----

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