Pressure on consumers caused by 'greedflation', says Cairns
Holly Cairns: 'Biggest price increases have been to basic food items.' Picture: Moya Nolan
What started as a cost-of-living crisis has now become a cost-of-greed crisis, with families struggling with spiralling food and energy costs, the Dáil has heard.
Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns has warned that entire industries are taking advantage of this crisis by inflating their prices to unsustainable levels.
She said wholesale energy prices fell 41% in the last three months of 2022 and have continued to fall this year but prices for residential customers have yet to fall.
"This is greedflation, plain and simple and people are suffering as a result," she told Tánaiste Micheál Martin.
Ms Cairns added that the biggest price price increases have not been to luxury products but basic food items like butter, bread, and pasta.
Hitting out at a lack of transparency around pricing, Ms Cairns said: "Now, the supermarkets have decided en masse to decrease the prices of milk and butter.
"They want to give the illusion of action while continuing to clean up."
Mr Martin said there were multiple factors behind the level of inflation.
However, he said new legislation to establish a food regulator is "the first of its kind" and will bring about far greater transparency designed to help the primary producer.
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin's Pearse Doherty said the series of mortgage rate rises since last summer have seen many Irish families facing annual repayment bills increasing by around €6,000.
He said delaying action to support mortgage holders struggling with spiralling interest rates is nonsensical.
Mr Doherty's comments came as the European Central Bank announced a further 0.25% rise in interest rates.
During Leaders' Questions, he criticised the Government's rejection of Sinn Fein's proposal for temporary and targeted relief on interest rate payments, which would absorb 30% of the recent hikes with a cap of €1,500.
Mr Doherty also accused the Government of "washing its hands" of under-pressure mortgage holders.
"The Government has claimed that they cannot act until the budget in October," he said.
"Can I remind you in the past number of weeks your government has announced tax changes on petrol and diesel, on solar panels?
"Tax changes for hospitality and tourism sector, you have removed levies for developers, all outside the normal budget cycle at a cost of hundreds of millions of euro.
"So, the argument that nothing can be done to support these families in the here and now with rising mortgage costs before October is simply a nonsense," he said.
In response, Mr Martin claimed Sinn Féin was adopting a "knee-jerk" approach to the cost-of-living crisis, proposing different policies for different sectors on a month-by-month basis.
The Fianna Fáil leader said the Government, in contrast, was implementing a comprehensive support strategy.
He claimed the Sinn Féin proposal was "discriminatory" as it would only benefit those on tracker mortgages, not those with fixed repayment deals.
"You're proposing to exclude nearly 50% from your specific proposals, to discriminate against those, which points to the need to look at this more broadly in terms of the cost-of-living pressures that are undoubtedly on people and the Government has intervened."
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