asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce if his attention has been drawn to the statement from the National Prices Commission that a high percentage of lower income elderly people in Dublin city have a nutritionally inadequate diet; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

I am aware of the report in question. Perhaps the most important thing to emerge from that report is that because of unwise shopping choices many people over 65 are spending more on diets which are nutritionally inadequate than on alternative diets which would be nutritionally adequate. However, we cannot compel people to depart from their personal preferences in this regard.

I find it hard to accept that as a responsible answer. He blames these people who are almost starving for the fact that they do not shop properly. The position is that they cannot afford to do so. This is the message coming from the National Prices Commission and I am asking what are the Government doing about it. Does somebody have to die to bring home to the Government their responsibility in the matter?

Bring in more French people.

I do not think Deputy Moore has fully understood or perhaps even read the report in question. It indicates that for people in the category over 65 both male and female, an adequate diet as determined by nutrition experts would cost less than the typical diet which they are buying. For instance, the cost of a day's food for a woman over 65 years of age, as an adequate diet as nutritionally approved, would be 62p as against a range of amounts between 77p and 66p paid for an inadequate diet. Similar relativities, only slightly narrower, apply in the case of males over the age of 65 years.

I agree this is a cause for concern. I agree, obviously, that increases in prices hit hard people in this category particularly. Apart from the other measures which have been adopted, it would be useful if the Health Education Bureau and the National Social Service Council were to see what measures they could adopt to promulgate the findings of this report, and see what can be done to improve the situation of the people in question. To that end, I have asked that the findings of this report be specifically drawn to the attention of those two bodies.

Would the Parliamentary Secretary go to his Minister and ask him to try to arrange the finances of the country to ensure that these pensioners, whose recent increases have been eroded by the spiralling cost of living, are brought to a realistic standard? The heading of the article is "The elderly poor are starving". They are not my words. They appear in the newspaper.

I agree this is a matter of concern. Quite apart from the increases in the various social welfare payments which have been made, the Government have sought, by their policy of subsidisation of particular prices and, in some cases, at the cost of extra prices for other less essential commodities, to bring down the price of essentials such as food which figure relatively larger in the weekly expenditure of old age pensioners than they do in the weekly expenditure of more prosperous sections of the community. In effect, as a result of this policy of subsidisation and the removal of value-added tax from certain commodities, there has been a shift of the burden of inflation away from people such as old age pensioners and those covered in this report.

Like Marie Antoinette, give them cake.