The reason we have a cost-of-living crisis in this country and across the world for working people is because of the greed of billionaires, multimillionaires, warmongers and the governments that back them. The personal fortunes of Donald Trump and his mate, Elon Musk, sum it all up. This year, while ordinary people across the world are crushed with a cost-of-living crisis and some people are being bombed to bits by Musk and Trump's allies in Palestine, Iran or Lebanon, Musk's fortune has gone past $1 trillion. It is massively increasing. He is the world's first trillionaire. As for Donald Trump's fortunes, shame on anybody who ever echoed a word of support or praise for this guy. Since he got into power, his personal fortune has nearly tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.5 billion by ripping off working class people in the United States with his mate Musk. The billionaires and the trillionaires. Then they start wars. They support a genocide, they bomb Iran, they bomb Lebanon, and the cost of living goes up for working people in this country because of these billionaires and trillionaires. We have our own version of that in this country also benefiting from all of that. There are 11 billionaires in this country and the number is increasing. The Collison brothers, Denis O'Brien, John Dorrance and all these people have €46 billion in personal wealth. The richest 1% of Irish society have between them 35% of all the wealth, which adds up to about €400 billion. These people are creaming it. The more they charge in rents and the more they speculate on property affecting ordinary people affected by the housing crisis, the richer they get while ordinary people are crushed with the cost of living. I cannot help pointing to the fact that while all of this is happening and ordinary people are being crushed by the cost of living, they want to double arms expenditure across Europe because Donald Trump has told them to do it, to the benefit of the international arms industry. Money that should go into addressing the cost-of-living crisis and into housing, health and childcare is going to go into the pockets of the arms producers to make the billionaires and trillionaires even wealthier while ordinary people are bombed to bits, sent out to fight and crushed with the cost of living increases. Contrast that with, for example, the postal worker who came in to see me the other day. The starting salary for a postal worker is €27,000 and the top of the scale is €41,000. He is in a housing assistant payment, HAP, tenancy with one bedroom but he has four children who have to come and stay with him, so they sleep on camping beds. Since An Post pays so poorly, they have not got enough postal workers, so he has to do a lot of overtime. However, if he gets too much overtime, he is going to go over the threshold for social housing and then he will not even be able to afford a home because there is absolutely no way he could afford private rents on his own salary. It is the multimillionaires who are charging these rents that he cannot afford. What is the Government doing to assist or address that situation? Is it introducing wealth taxes? Is it stopping the speculation on land and property? No, it is rezoning land and making more property millionaires overnight. All this wealth is not a victimless crime. It is coming out of the pockets of people in unaffordable rents and unaffordable house prices. That is where they are making their fortunes, and we have a Government that is facilitating them in doing it while ordinary working people are being absolutely crushed. Profits in this country have gone up by 400% since I came into the Dáil. Have workers’ wages gone up by 400%? You must be joking. In real terms, workers are probably worse off because their pay increases have not kept up with inflation. Unless working people get organised, fight and take to the streets against the hikes in the cost of living and the unaffordable cost of housing and accommodation, and demand wealth taxes to redistribute wealth, we are not going to address the cost-of-living crisis in this country.

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