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

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this important motion. Profiteering is the problem. It is as simple as that. Grocery prices have risen by 17%, an estimated increased cost of €1,200 for the average household. That is additional profit being made by somebody else. We all know who is making those profits. It is the big supermarket chains, wholesalers and meat processors. Their profits are going through the roof while ordinary people are crucified with unsustainable increases in the cost of groceries. That reflects the more general problem we are facing with the cost-of-living crisis. While ordinary people, households and workers are seeing dramatic cuts in their real income, the corporate sector has enjoyed an absolute bonanza. That is the elephant in the room which the Government does not want to acknowledge. The facts speak for themselves. It is rare that the figures in respect of corporate profits are discussed but when they are, those figures are so fantastic as to seem abstract to people. However, those profits are real and absolutely incredible.

I am a nerd in this regard. I study corporate profits, perhaps because I am a member of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. The increase in corporate profits in this country is beyond belief. It is absolutely staggering. In the last quarter of 2022, profits for the entire corporate sector in this country were €80 billion. That was up from ten years previously when the profits for the entire year of 2012 were €80 billion. We do not have the total figure for 2022 but we are talking about a quadrupling of corporate profits in a decade while the income of ordinary workers has been cut over the past two years. The real buying power based on the wages and salaries of ordinary workers has been cut but profits have gone through the roof. The so-called inflation crisis is a transfer of wealth. It is as plain as day. As prices go up, the energy companies, corporate landlords, supermarket chains, real estate investment trusts, REITs, and vulture funds make a fortune. The big manufacturers make an absolute fortune and ordinary people get whacked. They are whacked to the point that 671,000 people in this country are living in poverty. Of course, even the figure of €1,200 in inflated grocery costs masks the reality for working people who spend a much higher proportion of their income on food and energy, which have increased in cost. They also spend a high proportion of their income on housing. If the average figure is €1,200 across the population, we are talking about at least €2,000, if not €3,000, in increased cost just to put food on the table. Added to that are the increases in energy costs and the rents, accommodation and mortgage costs that most ordinary people are paying for the roofs over their heads. People are getting crucified.

At the same time, people who have surplus money and who are rich can buy shares in the Bank of Ireland, some private energy company, Tesco or some meat processing company. They can sit back and just watch the dividends roll in. They can watch the profits rising. They can watch the value of their assets and their balance sheets improving and improving. That is what is going on. There are tens of thousands of very rich people in this country who are sitting back and getting richer from all of this while doing nothing to earn it. They are doing zero; zilch. They go to their stockbrokers and ask what they should invest their excess wealth in. Their stockbrokers tell them where the profits are to be made. That is all they have to do to get richer and richer. When some of us suggest we ought to consider putting a cap on the profits of these companies, putting a cap on the maximum prices they can charge per kWh or for a basket of basic food items and groceries, or that we should cap rents, there are gasps. We are told that cannot possibly be done and that it would be economic lunacy and madness. We are told it is not even worth considering because it is so crazy. Why is it so crazy to cap the profits that are being made by these companies and to put maximum prices on the amounts they can charge people who are being impoverished and driven into a financially and economically unsustainable situation and, in many cases, into outright poverty? Their children are also being driven into outright poverty.

A very significant proportion of them are actually being driven into a situation where they have no roof over their heads. It is a stain on any decent civilised society, or any society that calls itself one, which we do, but yet we allow this to happen. We are told we cannot do these things. We have been calling for maximum price caps and the use of the Consumer Protection Act, which is there in law. When there is an emergency in the supply and cost of certain goods, the Government has the power. It is in laws that were not even written by the left but written by the Government more than a decade ago to cap prices. If it was considered a reasonable thing to put in legislation more than a decade ago, why is the Government now saying it cannot be done? Of course it can be done.

The other irony on which I must comment briefly was the comment by the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, that we should not forget about the war in Ukraine and how that has contributed to all of this. I read a very good report today by the Transnational Institute about the profiteering that is going on in the arms industry. The Orwellian logic of this just sickens me. The amount of money that is being spent in Europe on military expenditure, arms and weapons and means to kill people is increasing dramatically. As the report explains very well, all of that was happening well in advance of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. There has been a sustained push to increase expenditure on arms and weapons, and the truth is that every dollar, euro, or whatever the currency is that is spent on creating weapons to kill people, to end people's lives, is money that is not put into housing, health, education and eliminating poverty and inequality. That is the truth, yet the Government does not want to acknowledge it. This is probably all falling on deaf ears because the Government and the main parties in it think it is acceptable to operate in an economy where poverty is increasing, the cost of putting food on the table is becoming unsustainable, where people are homeless and so on. I am not saying the Government does not want to address it at all, but we cannot go too far in addressing it if it upsets the people who want to go down to the stockbroker and invest in the companies that are making profits. That is the reality of it. If that is not true, the Government should do it, because it can do it. It has the legal power to do it, and it certainly has the moral obligation to do it when people are having to make choices between food on the table for their children, turning on the heating when it when it is cold or being able to pay the rent to keep the roof over their head.

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