Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

What started as a cost-of-living crisis has now become a cost-of-greed crisis. Entire industries are taking advantage of this crisis by inflating their prices to unsustainable levels. Corporate profits were up 30% at the end of last year while domestic companies saw profits surge by 17%. The ECB has now warned that profiteering by companies is the main driver of inflation. This is greedflation, plain and simple, and people are suffering as a result. While companies make bumper profits, ordinary consumers are unable to afford basics like food and heat. Already this year, calls to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul have increased by 20%. With no end in sight to record price increases, an increasing number of workers and families are on the brink. We know energy companies are engaged in obscene profiteering. Wholesale energy prices fell 41% in the last three months of 2022 and have continued to fall this year. Despite this, prices for residential customers have yet to fall.

The Government claims it wants to see energy companies reduce prices but the Minister seems incapable of doing more than wagging his finger at the companies. We are now told his long-promised windfall tax will not be operable until the autumn. Food inflation has been surging for two years and is now running at nearly 17%. Annual grocery bills have increased by more than €1,200 in the past 12 months. How are people on fixed incomes like pensioners and disabled people expected to cope with these enormous price increases? Many are being forced to either cut down or cut out meals. Our most vulnerable citizens are going without.

It is also increasingly difficult for struggling parents on low and middle incomes to ensure there is food on the table for their children. The biggest price increases have not been to luxury products. They have been to basics like butter, bread and pasta. Now, the supermarkets have decided en masseto decrease the prices of milk and butter. This so-called supermarket war looks more like a phoney battle of convenience. They want to give the illusion of action while continuing to clean up.

A big problem is there is no transparency about prices. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission repeatedly tells us it has no role in even monitoring price levels. The Government is now planning to introduce a food regulator that will be similarly toothless. Farmers will continue to be at the mercy of processors and retailers, as will consumers. The Government should be able to do more than merely describe a problem. It has the power to act.

What is the Government going to do to counteract spiralling greedflation and out-of-control costs? Will it give the proposed new food regulator the powers it needs to investigate what is really happening in supply chains?

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