Can the Taoiseach honestly say to workers, pensioners and people on low and average incomes, with a straight face, that the paltry set of measures he announced last Thursday to deal with the catastrophic rise in the cost of living is adequate? Can he seriously suggest that is the case? Average heating and energy costs are due to go up by about €800 a year. The Government is giving people back €200 a year and a little bit extra on the fuel allowance. Who is supposed to pay the rest for workers whose wages are increasing at maybe 1%, for public sector workers, or for pensioners and social welfare recipients who got an extra fiver in the budget? Who is supposed to pay the rest?

What about rents? There is absolutely nothing on that in the measures. Rents are up 10% year-on-year according to daft.ie. Average rents in Dublin for a one-bedroom property are now €1,500, with the average for a two-bedroom property at €2,000. People would need between €17,000 and €24,000 in income just to pay the rent. There is nothing to deal with the unaffordable situation in rents. Then we have the wider cost of living, including food etc which is up by at least 5.7% and probably more. Where are workers supposed to make up the difference? Can the Taoiseach honestly say it is enough? It is an absolute insult.

Yesterday, in an interview, the Taoiseach ruled out another possibility. We proposed last week that there be rent controls, caps on energy prices and the bringing up of wages. He is not willing to do any of those things to control the spiralling cost of living. He said yesterday that we cannot get rid of the universal social charge, USC, because it would be too expensive to do so. Of course, that is not what Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil were saying before the election in 2016, when the now Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, said, as part of pre-election promises, the USC would be gone for everybody earning less than €80,000 within five years.

Paudie Coffey, who was Minister of State at the time, said in a press release and a Fine Gael manifesto that his party would get rid of the USC altogether. All of that is gone now; too expensive, apparently. As a result, we cannot give workers a break by getting rid of the USC. My question to the Taoiseach is if he honestly believes this is adequate? How are people supposed to pay their unaffordable rents or come up with the hundreds of euros extra in heating and energy costs if the Government rules out all of these things? Why is it that it is always alright for the workers to pay? They can afford it, but the Taoiseach says that we cannot afford to give them a break on the USC, that we cannot afford rent controls or that we cannot afford the energy price hikes, even though landlords-----

Time is up, Deputy.

----energy companies and corporations are making an absolute fortune at the same time that workers are being hammered as a result of the cost of living.

We provided €650 million in the budget to reduce the USC and tax, a move which the Deputy opposed. I would also make the point that he is against property tax. He is against carbon tax. He is against the USC. He is meant to be left wing. How are we going to fund the services?

Tax the rich.

Tax the corporations.

How are we going to invest in education, health and housing? How are we going to do that? The Deputy is far more populist than he is left wing. He is in one of the few left-wing groups in Europe that opposes all of those taxes and that does not believe that we need to broaden our tax revenue base to support workers-----

Tax the rich.

-----and people on low incomes and to invest in housing, health, education and childcare. We cannot do it. Some €4.5 billion comes in through the USC. If we just simply abolish it, we will not have the resources to invest in childcare, to invest in education and health and so on.

Tax the billionaires.

I genuinely put that to Deputy Boyd Barrett. I just do not understand where he is going to generate the revenue base that would create those billions.

Look at our budget.

Wages will rise in the next number of years. The Central Bank is predicting that wage rises will outpace price increases over the next three years, despite the spike in inflation this year. From the public service perspective, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, arrived at an agreement with the public service unions last year on the national pay agreement, which allowed for increases. We will maintain our engagement and contact with the unions on the issue of wages, wage increases, sectoral agreements, etc. All of these are part of that broader agreement, as is the restoration of hours under the financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, legislation, etc.

The measures we brought in last week were designed to help as many people as we possibly could. The cut to electricity costs of €200 is a significant enough help to people. It will not cover everything.

It certainly will not.

We acknowledge that. This is because the Government cannot cover everything. There have been two years where the Government has invested to an unprecedented extent into our economy. It was unprecedented that the Government would underpin what had to be done. It was right that we did it because of the pandemic. However, this cannot go on forever; we cannot continue to fund every enterprise in the country through the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, or the Covid restrictions support scheme, CRSS, forever. That was never on anyone's agenda. The object was to get through the pandemic and keep companies viable, keep enterprises viable and keep jobs intact. We took this action in order that when we come out of the pandemic, businesses can get back up and running and jobs can be retained. Through the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, we wanted to enable people to get through the pandemic. However, there certainly seems to be a view that the Government can be the bank of last resort for everything in the country. It just simply cannot be. We need balance here.

There is a significant State involvement in the economy. There is no question about that. We have a strong social protection system, which is funded by taxation. If you take away the revenue base, then you undermine the raison d'être of our social protection system, which is a strong one. It can be improved, and we can target it more. We will continue to do that in the next budget, as we did in the last budget, particularly for families and for those who are on low incomes.

It seems that the bank of the last resort is always the workers’ pocket. That is the truth. What the Taoiseach is really saying is that the workers can take it in the neck. The elephant in the room in the context of his argument is the incredible increase in the wealth and profits of the richest in our society----

Hear, hear.

----while workers are having their pockets looted as a result of increased energy prices and rents that are utterly stratospheric and totally unaffordable. The Taoiseach did not answer my question about how workers are supposed to pay for these things.

He also did not mention the fact that profits in the last decade have gone up by 172%. He did not mention that we now have nine billionaires in this country, according to an Oxfam report, who have €42 billion between them. That sum has increased dramatically during the pandemic. That is the elephant in the room that the Government never wants to talk about. Some people are doing very well from price inflation, including the profiteering energy companies and the landlords whose income from rents has gone through the roof. The Government never talks about them. It is okay for the workers to take it in the neck. It is okay for their pockets to be rifled to pay unaffordable bills, unaffordable rents and unaffordable food prices. They can manage it. It is always possible to loot their pockets but it is never possible to put a bit of extra tax on those who can well afford it.

The Deputy is wrong. We are not talking about looting anyone or any workers.

That is the reality.

A €630 million package of income tax and universal social charge reductions was brought in in the last budget and the Deputy opposed it. That is what we did in the last budget. We brought that in.

We are for getting rid of the USC.

The Taoiseach, without interruption.

The other point I would make is that the measures we took benefit workers. Cutting electricity bills by €200 benefits workers.

Who pays the other €600?

The €125 lump sum for fuel helps those on very low incomes. The threshold for the drugs payment scheme coming down to €80 benefits workers, particularly workers and families with high medical bills. Capping school transport charges helps workers. Those are measures we took. The 20% reduction in public transport fares helps workers, particularly those getting the bus or train to work. It helps them if we can reduce their everyday expenses. I accept that it will not deal with the entirety of it because this is a worldwide phenomenon that we have to deal with and get through. Equally, the economic model the Deputy wants to create, which is his legitimate aspiration, would destroy the economic model that, overall, has served-----

That is working so well.

Actually, it has worked far better than the model the Deputy is proposing. Investment would flee the country; there is no question about that.

It is not working very well at the moment.

Actually, there is almost full employment at the moment.

There is not.

There are nearly 2.5 million people working in this country.

That is not full employment.

Those are workers who are working because of a model that has involved foreign direct investment coming into the country over the last 50 years. That is something the Deputy opposes deep down.

As a tax haven.

The Deputy has no time for it. It employs thousands and thousands of people and he tells me he is on the side of workers.

Yes.

He wants to destroy the economic model to get elected and he would use every mechanism to do that. That is the raison d'être of how he operates. That is fair enough in one sense but people need to know it.

Just get them to pay their taxes.