Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

What is very clear is that Trump does not care about working people in the US. He does not care about working people in Europe or anywhere. What he is doing to the world economy and the US economy is sending it into freefall. As my colleague said, Trump's new world order will require a shift in our economy and our economic model. This will result in a shift globally. The question is how do we respond. How can we sustain employment? How can we support business? Importantly, how can we support workers? If we look at the level of working poverty and food poverty, we have been in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis for more than five years. One of the key parts of this cost-of-living crisis is what has been termed "greedflation", whereby in the context of rising prices businesses push up the cost because they know they can do so. We can see this in housing and basic grocery foods.

In what is likely to be another situation of rising costs for working people, the Irish Government has to look at how we can intervene and keep costs low and how we can support employment. One of the areas is housing. Unfortunately, the Government's housing policy, just like its wider economic policy, has left us more vulnerable than we should be to this economic catastrophe that is hitting. The over-reliance on institutional investors has meant we are seeing institutional investment fall off in terms of housing supply. It was core to the Government's Housing for All plan. This has left us vulnerable where housing supply is reducing. A report from Bank of Ireland economists issued yesterday states that as a result of the tariffs we could see private supply fall off and reduce in terms of the ability of people to buy. This is quite clear. Some people might say house prices might fall as a result. In fact, the failure to increase housing supply might leave house prices still maintained at a high level but workers facing a situation of reduced income and a reduced ability to borrow and, therefore, a continuation of the housing crisis.

What we need is the State to intervene. We need support for the delivery of affordable housing and investment in infrastructure so that we can create a sustainable economy. We cannot blame everything on what happens in the global economic situation. We have our own economy. We have our own population. We can invest in things like housing, healthcare and renewable energy. We can support workers and working families with their incomes, which can sustain our economy, and not make the mistakes of austerity.

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