The CSO consumer price index for March was published just under two weeks ago. Prices grew by 7.7%. It was the 18th straight month when the increase was at least 5% or more. We keep hearing that inflation should now start to moderate as rampant energy prices start to stabilise and subside. What is really hitting people where it hurts is soaring prices for basic essentials at the checkout. Over the past year alone, food prices rose by over 13%. Milk is up nearly 25%, butter is up 21%, eggs are up 20%, and I could go on. As the Taoiseach knows, these are the basic essentials on which everybody relies - the basic kitchen cupboard staples. Lower and modest income families are at the very sharpest end of the naked price gouging that is now going on.

The European Central Bank, which is hardly an anti-poverty NGO, has finally admitted that rising profits by big businesses, which are keeping prices high and wages low, account for half of all inflation pressure. This is extraordinary. It is happening with absolute impunity. CSO data published yesterday show that Irish companies are reporting record-breaking profits for 2022. Profits are a good thing. They are a healthy thing in a dynamic economy, but super-normal profits are not. Yesterday, the Government announced a €1 billion plan to help property developers build more homes, but what are those struggling with soaring food bills meant to do? The crazy prices that people are seeing for basic goods in the shops are out of all proportion to the extra costs that producers have been facing, costs that are in fact now going down substantially. We see supermarket chains using once-off offers and loyalty schemes to harvest their data in exchange for cheaper product. If you spend €50 you get a tenner off. If you use a clubcard, you get cheaper food. But when you add it all up, they are doing us anyway. What we are not seeing is transparency in pricing or any common decency. Exceptional times demand exceptional measures to protect the living standards of working people.

We did not need the OECD to tell us that for the first time since 2013 the living standards of Irish people are falling. Prices are rising faster than incomes. Simply put, people have less to spend on everyday essentials. Far too many corporations, like the big supermarket chains, are involved in reaping hypernormal profits at a time when families are struggling. I hope the Taoiseach will agree with me when I say that it is wrong. It is immoral. Unfortunately, there has been ambivalence and total silence from the Government on this. If we ask anyone what they are struggling with they tell us it is the cost of heating, renting and the soaring cost of groceries. Last week I called for the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, to investigate potential price gouging in the food market and for the authorities to examine how profit taking is contributing to the inflation problem. The Government has tools in its armoury to help address rising costs for households. What will the Taoiseach and his Government colleagues do to protect people, and will he ask the CCPC to carry out a review of competition and high prices in the Irish grocery market? Will he at the very least empower the commission to undertake a review of basic grocery prices to establish if price controls are in fact required?

First, I acknowledge the fact that prices are rising and rising rapidly in Ireland. For the first time in a long time we are seeing prices rise faster than incomes, but we think that will not be the case this year. Inflation will show down this year and we do expect to see not just nominal wage growth but real wage growth this year. To give one small example, the minimum wage increased by just over 7% in January. We expect inflation will be around 5% this year, so that is an increase in real terms. It would not have been the case last year but it will be this year. I think we will see that across the economy; as inflation moderates we will be back to real income growth again this year, which was the norm for almost every year in the past ten years, but not last year because of the impact of the global inflation crisis.

We have corresponded with the CCPC. I did so as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment a few months ago, specifically on prices at the pumps and also prices in the supermarkets. It has powers in that regard. When it comes to price controls, we would be reluctant to do that. Legislation does exist that allows price controls to be imposed in certain circumstances by the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, but we do not have a good experience with price controls in this country, and around the world. We can control retail prices, but we cannot control wholesale prices, so we might be able to tell the small shop owner or the medium sized shop owner what they can sell groceries for, but we cannot control the price at which they buy them from the wholesaler.

The same applies to the price at the petrol pump. You can control the price at the petrol pump, but not the price at which the garage has to buy the petrol and diesel. That is why there is long-standing experience, both in our history as a country and in examples around the world, of supply problems, shortages and rationing where price controls have been imposed. We do not want to go down that road.

We know that the living standards of our people are being eroded. People who are at the front end of this and who are most acutely affected are those on low and modest incomes. We know that the national minimum wage did not increase sufficiently in order to allow people's living standards to at least stabilise. We required a much higher increase to the national minimum wage to protect those who work very hard and get up early in the morning but who simply do not make enough to exist. Things are simply getting worse for them.

For far too many families, the dread of the weekly trip to the checkout is now akin to the dread people experience visiting the dentist. They simply do not know what it is going to cost and cannot budget for it. The Taoiseach is right that there are two sections of the Consumer Protection Act 2007 that provide the Government with the ability to address pricing issues and introduce, for example, temporary price orders to set maximum prices. These are sections 61 and 62. If it is the case that the Government does not want to act in this regard, it could do what the Greek Government did, that is, organise a summit with supermarkets. The Government could bring all the big supermarkets together to address these issues. The Government of Greece worked with supermarkets in that country to ensure the setting of price controls in respect of 51 staples. The Government here has the power to do this. Will the Taoiseach commission the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to carry out an examination of the market to identify why prices in Ireland are so high and what action can be taken?

We have a retail forum through which the Government engages with retailers. It is very much on the agenda of the forum to ensure that prices will not increase too much or by more than is justified, given the input costs.

The Deputy is not entirely correct in what he said about the national minimum wage. Since the national minimum wage was established, it has gone up by more than the cost of living. It has not gone up in line with wages; it has gone up not only in line with the rate of inflation but by well above it. That may not be true for every one of the past 20 years but it is broadly true and will be true this year, which will see an increase of roughly 7% or 7.5%. The inflation rate is expected to be about 5%. Over the course of 20 years, the minimum wage has not only kept up with inflation but has gone ahead of it. While there have been a few years in which there have been exceptions in this regard, what the Deputy said is not generally true. His narrative is incorrect.

The other area we need to consider is tax. Regarding household income, it is a matter of how much you earn, how much you get to keep after tax and how far it goes. The Deputy will have seen the OECD report on taxing wages, which he quoted in his press release yesterday. The report shows that Ireland taxes the average single person at a rate that is about average but that our rate is higher than in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, the USA and Canada. That is why I hope the Deputy will end his opposition to income tax cuts.