The recently established Cost of Living Coalition is calling people out onto the streets on Saturday, 18 June, for a national demonstration and day of protest to demand a comprehensive, urgent and radical package of measures to address the cost-of-living crisis that is absolutely crucifying workers, pensioners, students and people on low and middle incomes. It will be a protest against the Government's spectacular failure to address the cost-of-living crisis.

Today, we have more evidence of the Government's failure in this regard. EUROSTAT has indicated that we are facing inflation of 8.3%. This means that the value in purchasing power terms of workers' wages, pensions and incomes will drop by more than 8%, meaning real cuts in income for the people who can least afford them. Then we have the Taoiseach warning of a new era of high energy prices. That is on top of a 42% increase in energy and heating costs for ordinary people in the past year alone.

Against this background of a cost-of-living crisis, the Government acts like a helpless, innocent bystander that can do absolutely nothing about it. The Government is not going to do anything before the budget, and it is totally unclear whether it will do anything at all. That is why people are coming onto the streets.

Even the crisis in Dublin Airport is linked to this problem. In a word, the problem there is that the DAA, which has executives on total packages in excess of €366,000, expects the security workers it hires to operate on rubbishy flexible contracts for €14 an hour. When they cannot even plan and will not even know what hours they will have and, therefore, what income they will have in a week's time, is it any wonder that the DAA has difficulty recruiting people? The chief executive overseeing this is on a package of €366,000 a year. That is the problem in the context of the bigger crisis we face.

More than 600,000 people in this country are suffering deprivation and there are hundreds of thousands of workers are on low pay. However, spectacular profits are being made by the energy companies. Last year, Energia's profits were up 46% and the ESB's were up to nearly €700 million. Even Boris Johnson, a Tory, can introduce a windfall tax on the profits of energy companies to try to get some revenues to protect ordinary people from the cost-of-living crisis, but this Government will not do what even Boris Johnson is doing - and, my God, he is no left-winger. When is the Government going to bring in emergency measures in respect of housing costs, the slaughtering of people's incomes and a cost of living that is crucifying ordinary people? What is going to be in that package? So far, the Government has done nothing.

I do not expect Deputy Boyd Barrett to come in here and give any kind of fair assessment of what the Government has done, but to come in and say it has done nothing is just blatantly incorrect. He knows that. In the most recent budget, and the measures since, we have introduced a package of approximately €2.4 billion of taxpayers' money to support households because we recognise and acknowledge the impact of the extraordinary level of inflation that is currently being experienced. Of course, an inflation rate of more than 8% is a real concern because it impacts on people, living standards and the competitiveness of businesses.

This is a global phenomenon. We have to acknowledge that. In the UK, the rate is 9%. In the US, it is 8.5%. In today's EUROSTAT publication, 12 of the 19 eurozone countries have rates of inflation that are higher than Ireland's. That is why we responded. It is why the Government continues to ensure that we can fund the measures we have already announced, including the reduction in VAT and excise duty. As the Deputy is aware, we have brought in two separate bullet payments for fuel allowance recipients, a €200 energy credit in respect of electricity bills for all households and a cut to the PSO levy from October. There is a major multi-annual national retrofitting scheme. We have put caps on school transport fees for families. We have cut transport fares by 20%, with an additional 50% cut in fares for young people. We reduced the drugs payment scheme threshold to €80 per month, benefiting more than 70,000 families. We brought forward the changes announced in the most recent budget in respect of the working family payment. We completely abolished any hospital charges for children overnight. There are also targeted measures. For example, the 9% rate for tourism and hospitality has, as the Deputy will be aware, been extended. We also introduced specific measures in the haulage sector. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue, introduced a suite of measures to support the tillage sector, farmers, and rural communities. I do not expect Deputy Boyd Barrett to give the Government any credit for that. He wants more to be done. That is a reasonable political position to adopt.

What we, as a Government, are seeking to do is navigate our way through this. In order to help the country to get through this period, we are engaging in social dialogue with the main social partners, through the Labour Employer Economic Forum, the trade unions and the employer bodies. The national economic dialogue will take place on 20 June. This will provide an opportunity for a wider set of stakeholders and Opposition parties also to set out their positions. However, we also need to be honest with people. These are extraordinary times. This is a record level of inflation. It has never happened before in the eurozone. In fact, it is global. We will do the best we can as a Government to support and assist people, and we have to date, but it is not possible for any government to introduce measures to completely offset the impact of a terrible war in Ukraine, which has caused such dislocation in the energy markets and in relation to so many foods and materials across the supply chain. We acknowledge that it is having an impact and that is why we have responded to date. That is why we are finalising our budgetary position as we move towards the summer economic statement and the preparation of the budget.

The reason so many people have got involved in this new Cost of Living Coalition - pensioners groups, retired workers groups, student unions, single-parent advocacy groups, anti-poverty groups, trade unions and others - is because the measures the Government has been taking are a drop in the ocean; they are making little or no difference to the crucifying increases in the cost of living that people face. The key point is that people are acutely aware that this is a tale of two crises. Ordinary working people, pensioners and students are being hammered with the cost of inflation, but they see simultaneously that some people are doing very well out of it. The Oxfam report published last week shows that Ireland's nine billionaires saw their assets and wealth increase by 55% last year. The energy companies see their profits going through the roof. The billionaires, millionaires and the CEOs of the DAA, who seem to be more interested in setting up airports in Saudi Arabia than in sorting out the problems at Dublin Airport, are doing very well. For workers, pensioners, students and ordinary people, however, the measures the Government is taking are simply not enough. This is because the Government will not address the elephant in the room, namely, the gross inequalities in income and wealth that exist in our society.

The Deputy's statement that what the Government has done is not enough is a fairer comment because that is his view, but to come to the Chamber to say we did nothing is, as I said, completely incorrect. I do not accept that €2.4 billion in measures represents a drop in the ocean. For a country the size of Ireland, the use of taxpayers' money of that magnitude is a major decision. It is not one we made lightly but it was absolutely warranted. To take those interventions outside the normal budgetary calendar, to reduce VAT and excise, and to introduce once-off payments and better social welfare supports is not something any government would consider in normal times.

We also have to be cognisant of the wider picture. There are increasing risks to the global economy and as a small, open, trading economy, Ireland is not immune to those risks. The Deputy will be aware the cost of borrowing for our country has increased significantly in recent weeks. We will work our way through this. The priority now is to agree in the summer economic statement, taking all those factors into account, what the appropriate budgetary stance is for Ireland and how much money we should be spending-----

People cannot wait until then.

-----and can afford to spend. We will then make decisions as a Government to be as fair as we possibly can in recognising the cost-of-living challenges people are undoubtedly facing but also being honest with people. The Government cannot fully off-set the impact on people's lives of this terrible war, which it had nothing to do with.