What started as a cost-of-living crisis has now become a cost-of-greed crisis. Entire industries are taking advantage of this crisis by inflating their prices to unsustainable levels. Corporate profits were up 30% at the end of last year while domestic companies saw profits surge by 17%. The ECB has now warned that profiteering by companies is the main driver of inflation. This is greedflation, plain and simple, and people are suffering as a result. While companies make bumper profits, ordinary consumers are unable to afford basics like food and heat. Already this year, calls to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul have increased by 20%. With no end in sight to record price increases, an increasing number of workers and families are on the brink. We know energy companies are engaged in obscene profiteering. Wholesale energy prices fell 41% in the last three months of 2022 and have continued to fall this year. Despite this, prices for residential customers have yet to fall.

The Government claims it wants to see energy companies reduce prices but the Minister seems incapable of doing more than wagging his finger at the companies. We are now told his long-promised windfall tax will not be operable until the autumn. Food inflation has been surging for two years and is now running at nearly 17%. Annual grocery bills have increased by more than €1,200 in the past 12 months. How are people on fixed incomes like pensioners and disabled people expected to cope with these enormous price increases? Many are being forced to either cut down or cut out meals. Our most vulnerable citizens are going without.

It is also increasingly difficult for struggling parents on low and middle incomes to ensure there is food on the table for their children. The biggest price increases have not been to luxury products. They have been to basics like butter, bread and pasta. Now, the supermarkets have decided en masse to decrease the prices of milk and butter. This so-called supermarket war looks more like a phoney battle of convenience. They want to give the illusion of action while continuing to clean up.

A big problem is there is no transparency about prices. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission repeatedly tells us it has no role in even monitoring price levels. The Government is now planning to introduce a food regulator that will be similarly toothless. Farmers will continue to be at the mercy of processors and retailers, as will consumers. The Government should be able to do more than merely describe a problem. It has the power to act.

What is the Government going to do to counteract spiralling greedflation and out-of-control costs? Will it give the proposed new food regulator the powers it needs to investigate what is really happening in supply chains?

The military authorities have advised that Defence Force Regulation (DFR) A9 sets out the qualifying criteria required to be awarded Defence Forces Medals. The award of Service Medals for both Officers and Non Commissioned Officers and Privates is as follows:

1. DFR A9 Paragraph 4a provides that the qualifying service for the award of the Service Medal to an officer shall be satisfactory and continuous service in the Permanent Force for a period of 5,475 days or the aggregate of satisfactory and continuous service in the Permanent Force and the Reserve of Officers (First Line) for a period of 5,475 days (15yrs).

2. DFR A9 Paragraph 5a provides that the qualifying service for the award of the Service Medal to a non-commissioned officer or Private shall be satisfactory and continuous service in the Permanent Force for a period of 3,650 days, or the aggregate of satisfactory and continuous service in the Permanent Force and the Reserve of Men (First Line) for a period of 3,650 days (10 yrs).

I say all that because it gets dismissed in the House. It is mistakenly believed that all of this did not happen or there was no intervention by the Government. There is. The windfall is there. Fundamentally, quite a range of factors are responsible for the inflationary cycle. Food prices went up by approximately 13% in March. We acknowledge that, but-----

I thank the Tánaiste.

-----that is compared to approximately an average cost of 19% across Europe. In the areas of education, health and transport-----

We are way over time.

-----it is a different story because of Government intervention.

I recognise the different factors that have an impact on it, but I was highlighting the fact that wholesale energy prices fell by 41%-----

Yes.

-----but they have yet to fall for residential customers. We are only seeing a windfall tax in the autumn and now there are similar issues with the cost of food. The European Central Bank, ECB, is clear that corporate profits are now the main driver of that inflation and not the other factors. The pain that is being inflicted by the ECB to control inflation interest rate hikes is not being felt by corporations, it is being felt by ordinary workers and families whose mortgages are going up.

We are due another interest rate hike today. That will be the seventh interest rate hike in less than a year. All the pain of the crisis is being visited on ordinary workers and families. On one side, supermarkets and energy companies are among those who are price gouging with wild abandon. On the other hand, the ECB is tightening the screw even further with incessant increases in interest rates. None of what the Tánaiste said addresses that. It is just giving out different payments to try to make it less painful for people, but it is not addressing the cause of the problem. The pressure on people is too much to bear. Those payments are not addressing it anymore. A tiny decrease in the price of butter and milk is not the answer to this.

The Agricultural and Food Supply Chain Bill will be on Report and Final Stages in the Dáil next week and-----

-----I am asking the Tánaiste please to revisit this. Now is the chance to address the issues in relation to food prices. There can be some management of this going forward, because it is not the primary producers, such as farmers, who benefit, and it is not the consumers.

The whole purpose of that legislation is to help the primary producer. That was its origin. That is why Fianna Fáil argued for this when we were in opposition. In government, the three parties agreed-----

We need a food regulator with teeth, not an ombudsman.