Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

Cuirim fáilte roimh na Little Blue Heroes. We are in very safe hands with outstanding people like them. I thank them for being here.

Households continue to be hammered left, right and centre by soaring prices with no let-up. With extortionate rent, big electricity and gas bills, high fuel prices, unaffordable childcare and runaway insurance premiums, prices are out of control. Workers and families are squeezed and forced to live week to week. They ask themselves when all of this will stop because they cannot keep up.

Nowhere is all of this clearer than when it comes to the weekly shop. A report published today by PwC found that 70% of Irish customers are extremely worried by the cost of food. This is just the latest in a series of reports confirming what people already know, which is that food prices are through the roof. Let us take a look at some of the basics. According to the CSO, in the past year alone, a pound of butter has gone up €1, a kilo of Irish cheddar cheese has gone up 57 cent and 2 l of milk has gone up 27 cent. Writing in The Irish Times last week, Conor Pope found that, according to figures provided to "Pricewatch", a kilo of chicken that cost €4.99 in 2022 now costs €11. That is just crazy. Many households are paying €3,000 a year more in the supermarket than they were in 2021. It is little wonder that families are finding it harder and harder to put food on the table and, in some cases, are cutting back on basics. People now feel serious pressure and anxiety as they push their trolleys to the checkout.

In May 2023, the Taoiseach's colleague the Minister of State, Deputy Neale Richmond, told the public that he had this situation under control. He puffed out his chest, called in the big supermarket chains and declared that they had just six weeks to get prices down. That was 110 weeks ago. Clearly the Minister of State failed to exert any real pressure on those retailers because he was duly and unceremoniously ignored and things have only gotten worse for customers at the checkouts. That was it. That single limp intervention was the entirety of the Government's effort to tackle runaway food prices. The Government could not get the job done so it just walked away and left households to feel the pain.

It seems the Government's latest plan is to do absolutely nothing, to stick its head in the sand and allow people to be ripped off week in and week out. So out of touch is the Taoiseach's Government that it digs in and refuses to bring forward supports to help hard-pressed households deal with these out-of-control prices. Its message to workers and families under enormous pressure is that they are on their own.

Tá praghsanna bia tar éis ardú go hard na spéire. Tá imní ar theaghlaigh gach seachtain nuair a théann siad chun siopadóireachta. Caithfidh an Rialtas a ghníomhú chun daoine a chosaint ó na costais ollmhóra seo.

Was it all just bull and bluster when the Government called in the big supermarket chains two years ago? Will the Taoiseach do anything at all to tackle soaring food prices? How on earth is it that he refuses to consider any cost-of-living supports when people are under such pressure just to make ends meet?

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