Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am very glad to speak on our motion because prices and corporate greed are soaring while people’s standards of living, and their hearts, are sinking. I commend an Teachta O'Reilly on this Private Member's motion. I am very pleased the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, will not oppose the motion. I am sure the Minister of State is also hearing that prices in our shops are not normal. The fear of going out to do the big shop, which is becoming the much-smaller shop, is not normal. The indifference the Government has to the suffering of its people is not normal either. Groceries are up 17% a year and food inflation in the 12 weeks to mid-April is almost the same. Thus far, the Government has not even looked at price gouging and corporate profiteering.

In north Kildare, people are suffering. Every week when I see people doing their supermarket shop, I see them putting stuff up to the till but holding back the biscuits and the little luxuries. I have spotted this quite often when doing my shop. These are our workers and our carers. They are our pensioners and our families who are forced to depend on social welfare. There appears to be zero compassion for them and zero care, even though they will spend an extra €1,200 per year on groceries, given current spending patterns. The Government message is, "Yes, we could help you but we are choosing not to." This is what people are hearing. This is what people are saying to me. This is no way for people to live. This is what they tell me when they get in touch with me. They feel abandoned, unheard and not listened to. They feel they are living in a parallel universe to the Government where everything is hunky-dory and money is rolling into the Exchequer through their hard work, but they are being left to fend for themselves in a kind of coalition hunger games of economic survival. It is not even about bread and butter issues anymore: it is bread and spread. They are trying to spread the spread as thinly as possible to make it last. It would seem the Government is tone deaf. It is time the Government really got itself in gear. We must make sure corporate savings are passed on to customers. It is not rocket science, but it is the Minister of State's job. I wish the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, all the best in his new job. I congratulate him on that. I am glad the Minister of State will not oppose the motion.

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