Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)

I, too, welcome the Little Blue Heroes and the gardaí and commend everyone involved in that.

Listening to the Taoiseach's answers I wonder does he get it at all. He was presented with the stark reality people face in terms of grocery prices and he rattled off a list of numbers and inflation rates rather than acknowledging the real difficulties people are facing when they do their weekly shop. I do not know if the Taoiseach even notices or acknowledges the problems people are facing.

Some 70% of people are either very worried or extremely worried about food prices. Will the Taoiseach even acknowledge that? Many families are now spending an extra €3,000 per year on their grocery and shopping bills and prices are still increasing. Anyone doing their weekly shopping recently will have noticed prices again beginning to soar. Does the Taoiseach even acknowledge that reality for people? We are talking about parents who are working really hard all week, and who are going without meals so they can feed their children. We are talking about pensioners who have to leave items behind on the checkout that they can no longer afford. We are talking about families scrimping and saving just so they can get by. No one should be going hungry. No one should be having to skip meals to feed their children and no pensioner should be worried about keeping food on the table. We are talking about the basics here; what it costs just to survive in this country. Buying the essentials of milk, butter, pasta and bread now costs more than it ever has before. The level of stress and anxiety this is causing families is growing.

Soaring food prices are something the Government promised to address. It is now more than two years since the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, organised his meeting with grocery retailers to discuss runaway prices. What happened was that meeting was a talking shop convened for optics. He turned up, wagged his finger and everyone went home. Grocery prices are higher now than they ever have been, so if the Minister of State thinks that was a success it certainly has not been. We all have suspicions that we are being ripped off and price-gouged in this country when it comes to grocery prices, but there is no way to prove it because we do not have full transparency when it comes to supermarket profits.

People are handing more than €10 billion per year to supermarkets to buy food for their families, so why is there not full transparency about profits? Supermarket chains are not required to publish detailed and full accounts about their profits. Given that people have to buy food, there is no choice in this. Why is this not a requirement for all supermarket retailers and chains? There is a simple answer to this. He could act. I am asking him if he will act to require all supermarket chains and retailers to do this. I do not want diversionary answers here or distractions. It is a simple question. I want him to answer the question.

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