Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)

One in five families have cut back on or gone without heating in the past six months. Two in five are going without essential items, including food and medical appointments. Some 40% of parents are skipping meals so their children would have enough.

According to today’s Barnardos report into the cost-of-living crisis, parents across the country are facing impossible decisions. This is starkly highlighted in the quotes from the survey. One parent said: "We are just barely getting by ... I never have money in my purse or account. We are worse off than before." Another said: "My children are now aware of our financial difficulties and it is impacting their mental health. We’ve had to... get rid of medical insurance, visit food banks, and stop after school activities."

Listening to the rhetoric from Government figures in recent weeks, you would think that the cost-of-living crisis had ended, but nothing could be further from the truth. Inflation may be slowing but prices continue to rise. Eurostat data show that household expenditure on goods and services in Ireland is the second highest in the EU. Rents are rising faster than at any point in the past 20 years. Renters must now pay in excess of €2,000 per month to keep a roof over their heads. That is if they can find anywhere to rent.

To compound matters, students and their families now face huge uncertainty as to fees for the coming year. A vast hike in fees from €2,000 to €3,000 has been proposed and there is no clarity from Government as to whether this will be the case or not. This is having a massive impact on households seeking to budget and plan for the year ahead, particularly households with two or more children in third level education. The Taoiseach must be aware of this.

All this is against the backdrop of threatened tariffs by Donald Trump. The international context is precarious but here at home it is precarious too. Why? It is because of nearly a decade of underinvestment by successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments and failure to invest in the necessary public services and infrastructure that would provide a lifeline for struggling communities. We have had nearly a decade of failure to invest in social and affordable housing and in water and energy infrastructure, itself now slowing the pace of construction. It has been a decade without the development of decent disability services or provision in education, healthcare and childcare. That is why hard-pressed households face such insecurity now.

The Government's method of governance is about capitulating to the private sector and relying on the market to provide but the market cannot deliver decent public services. The over-reliance on developers has not delivered affordable housing, just as over-reliance on big supermarket chains has inflicted some of the highest grocery prices in the EU. The cost of a weekly shop is rising at more than double the rate of general inflation and those most affected are hard-pressed families. Will the Taoiseach give clarity on the measures he will adopt to tackle this grocery greedflation? Will he give students and families clarity on the level of fees they will pay in the year ahead?

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