The cost-of-living crisis is hitting my constituency of Galway West incredibly hard. In this Chamber I have raised countless examples of families in Galway under unbearable pressure from the cost of living. Working people cannot make their wages stretch to cover soaring rents, crippling energy bills and the ever-increasing cost of their weekly shop. Crucially, rents are now up in Galway by 18%. That means that rents are rising more than four times faster than wages. This Government knows that this is completely and utterly unsustainable. Even the Taoiseach admitted that very few people can afford rents in Galway but still he refused to act. The Government votes against every single proposal we put forward to ease pressures on renters. If the Government were serious about tackling the cost-of-living crisis, it would ban rent increases effective immediately. It would end no-fault evictions and ramp up housing supply by actually building social and affordable homes. No matter how many stories are raised in this Chamber of working people, struggling families and fractured communities in desperate need of help with the cost-of-living crisis, the Government fails to act. The Government should be listening to these families and communities who are the backbone of our economy. Instead, it takes its advice from a select few economists who pat it on the back and tell it that it has built a strong, booming economy that is performing very well for the wealthiest in our society. Two weeks ago, some of our most senior economists sounded the alarm bells. The Central Bank published a quarterly bulletin. Its revised forecast shows that the cost-of-living crisis will go up even further than it expected this year. These forecasts show that prices are not just going up, they are going up faster than wages. The Central Bank is crystal clear. Under this Government, people are getting poorer. The Central Bank is telling us that real wages are dropping. That means people are going to struggle even more than they have been up to this point. There is no point in everybody coming into this Chamber during the winter months to talk about this at a time when parents cannot put food on the table or heat their homes. When that happens, everybody cries out and says, "Oh my god. Isn't that terrible". We told the Minister of State that this would happen. It is not only that we are telling him it is happening; statistics constantly show that people are falling into poverty because of the political choices being made. This is on the Government. Rents and the housing crisis are getting worse. That is a direct result of the Government's policies as opposed to anybody else's. It is high time that the Government started listening to the other people in this Chamber, because what it is doing is terrible.

Sentiment score: -0.18