Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The CSO consumer price index for March was published just under two weeks ago. Prices grew by 7.7%. It was the 18th straight month when the increase was at least 5% or more. We keep hearing that inflation should now start to moderate as rampant energy prices start to stabilise and subside. What is really hitting people where it hurts is soaring prices for basic essentials at the checkout. Over the past year alone, food prices rose by over 13%. Milk is up nearly 25%, butter is up 21%, eggs are up 20%, and I could go on. As the Taoiseach knows, these are the basic essentials on which everybody relies - the basic kitchen cupboard staples. Lower and modest income families are at the very sharpest end of the naked price gouging that is now going on.

The European Central Bank, which is hardly an anti-poverty NGO, has finally admitted that rising profits by big businesses, which are keeping prices high and wages low, account for half of all inflation pressure. This is extraordinary. It is happening with absolute impunity. CSO data published yesterday show that Irish companies are reporting record-breaking profits for 2022. Profits are a good thing. They are a healthy thing in a dynamic economy, but super-normal profits are not. Yesterday, the Government announced a €1 billion plan to help property developers build more homes, but what are those struggling with soaring food bills meant to do? The crazy prices that people are seeing for basic goods in the shops are out of all proportion to the extra costs that producers have been facing, costs that are in fact now going down substantially. We see supermarket chains using once-off offers and loyalty schemes to harvest their data in exchange for cheaper product. If you spend €50 you get a tenner off. If you use a clubcard, you get cheaper food. But when you add it all up, they are doing us anyway. What we are not seeing is transparency in pricing or any common decency. Exceptional times demand exceptional measures to protect the living standards of working people.

We did not need the OECD to tell us that for the first time since 2013 the living standards of Irish people are falling. Prices are rising faster than incomes. Simply put, people have less to spend on everyday essentials. Far too many corporations, like the big supermarket chains, are involved in reaping hypernormal profits at a time when families are struggling. I hope the Taoiseach will agree with me when I say that it is wrong. It is immoral. Unfortunately, there has been ambivalence and total silence from the Government on this. If we ask anyone what they are struggling with they tell us it is the cost of heating, renting and the soaring cost of groceries. Last week I called for the CCPC to investigate potential price gouging in the food market and for the authorities to examine how profit taking is contributing to the inflation problem. The Government has tools in its armoury to help address rising costs for households. What will the Taoiseach and his Government colleagues do to protect people, and will he ask the CCPC to carry out a review of competition and high prices in the Irish grocery market? Will he at the very least empower the commission to undertake a review of basic grocery prices to establish if price controls are in fact required?

See this speech in context