Brian Stanley: Cost of Living at Breaking Point

And I want to just welcome some of the proposals here in terms of trying to reduce the cost of living for people. Minister, we've had a cost of living crisis since the end of Covid and that has escalated and it's now at crisis point. It's a serious situation and government need to understand that. Middle and low income households were never under so much pressure. Fuel, petrol, diesel costs, solid fuel costs, gas, electricity, which of course as we know today is the most expensive in the European Union. Rent, mortgages, house prices, waste charges, health insurance doesn't go up just once a year anymore, it goes up two and three times. And in double digits that people are forced to pay. Grocery prices and now students fees and much more are all escalating. And the combined total of all of this is bringing huge pressure on ordinary hard working people who cannot keep up. People are in arrears with mortgages and I say all this sincerely. You know, rents escalating, people just can't pay their electricity bills. We have as of March 220,000 people with arrears under electricity. I think it's fair to say that that's probably could be 400,000 now. 180,000 with arrears on gas as well back in March. It's safe to say that that figure has escalated since then. And on top of all, but the top 10% of people in Ireland never had it so good. So don't forget, we mustn't forget that when people are paying higher, the money doesn't just disappear. Because the profit margins of a lot of companies are up. You know, the big supermarket chains, the big hotel chains, McDonald's. Their wealth, all the wealth of those continues to increase. It's a transfer of wealth, that's what we're looking at. Budget 26 not just left behind ordinary PAYE workers and the self-implied, but it actually left them worse off. Because Fianna Fáil's and Fianna Gael's failure to increase the tax thresholds and move the tax bands. PAYE workers and self-implied are now paying much more tax. Electricity, as I said, the electricity situation, you know, the number of people in arrears has reached a crisis point. And people in rented accommodation are really struggling because rents are out of control. And we know why that is. So that must be addressed. And one thing I'd say to you about electricity is that we had one of the cheapest electricity systems in Western Europe. When it's all in public ownership. But since we started privatising it, I know other reasons have been given. And I'm sure there are other factors that accept that. But one of them is because it's privatised, because there's now a profit fraction that is taken by the companies that are generating it. That's one of the things that's happened and we need to get that into our heads. Mortgages are at an all-time high because house prices are at an all-time high. So, granted, I'm not asking you to throw money around the place here. But we should have targeted measures and I don't agree with untargeted measures. So targeted measures need to be the name of the game. We need to look at those households who are under 70,000 or 75,000 a year. You should bring in a windfall tax on the large energy companies. And there's good examples across Europe where that is happening. We need to reverse the VAT cuts for the big hotel chains and the big food distribution, the big companies such as McDonald's and those. We need targeted energy credits for households under 75,000. We need a cost of living measure urgently. A cost of living payment for people who are disabled. Because they are €1,400 worse off this year than last year because of the budget measures, the way they were done. We need to restore student grants. Sorry, restore the back to school funding. We need to halt the planned increase in student fees. And what I would say as well is that you do need to readjust the tax bands. We need to workers, ordinary workers, particularly workers on below 75,000, whether self-employed or pay away, they were left behind. We need to increase the level of relief on rent paid and on mortgage interest charges. And also I would ask the government, the CCPC, the Competition, Consumer and Protection Commission, that needs to be examined to see what they're about. Because in my time here it has shown itself to be totally useless. And don't say that lightly. One of the other things that's being proposed is the solar grants. Solar is a quick win. They're easy to fit. It's a way of, and I know it can't be done in a day or a week, but in the medium term we should move fairly quickly to try and do that. To try and scale up the grants for solar and to get them on to households. And also speed up the warmer homes scheme. Because the waiting list for Ciancola is currently 23-24 months. And I would ask that those practical measures be taken, Minister.