Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

Cuirim fáilte roimh an rún seo ó na Social Democrats. Sinn Féin will be supporting this motion. By any measure the Government has failed to get to grips with the cost-of-living crisis. It is either doing nothing or making things worse. If we name any of the issues, we can see that we are paying more. The price of everything has gone absolutely through the roof, from energy bills to rent, insurance and childcare. It is all going one way and that is up. The cost of the weekly shop is now €3,000 more per annum for many families. People are working harder and harder but they cannot keep up. Fine Gael's Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, gave supermarkets six weeks to cut prices. That was over a year ago. It was just an embarrassing PR stunt by the Government. Since then, food prices have gone up faster and faster. There have been 50,000 phone calls to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul by families who cannot afford food, and the Government has just sat back and done nothing. It has ignored people's reality. People are getting fleeced and the reality is that the Government still has no idea of what is going on. It has no oversight of the profits or pricing of the large retailers and supermarkets. Farmers have been getting squeezed for years but now consumers are being ripped off and someone in the middle is profiting off all of this suffering. Do not try to spin the yarn that there is nothing to see here. The stock prices of supermarkets and the large retailers and food companies have been going through the roof. They have been skyrocketing in recent times. Tesco's stock is up 30% in the last year. United Natural Foods Inc., the owners of SuperValu, saw its stock price rise by 60% in the last year. It is time that the Minister of State took action. The Taoiseach said that he has the guts to take on price gouging, so he should show it because we need to make food affordable. We have seen action taken in other jurisdictions by other governments right across Europe, but here in this country and here with this do-nothing Government, people are being ripped off and the Government is sitting on its hands. It is not acceptable any more.

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