Two years ago I canvassed in the local elections. One day in Harold’s Cross I knocked on the door of a man about my age. He came to the door. There were toys in the hallway and he was making dinner for his kids. I asked him what were the kinds of political issues that were on his mind and he said, “The cost of living”. That was May 2024. Two years later I think about that man, with everything that has happened since then – energy costs accelerating to the highest in Europe, punishing rental or interest rates, inaccessible childcare miles away that costs a second mortgage and the cost of goods and food, groceries and other everyday items surpassing the rate of wage growth. The core truth of the cost-of-living crisis is that for many people there was a crisis two years ago. There was a crisis when this Government and the Minister of State was elected. There was a crisis at the time when it was announcing the last budget and last January when I asked that it give disabled people a modest emergency payment after it gutted their incomes in the budget. There has been a cost-of-living crisis ongoing for months and years before the illegal war on Iran and the energy crisis it has brought about but the Government spent months and years not reacting, making poverty rates climb, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office and the CSO, allowing price-gouging to go unchecked and incentivising rents and mortgage interest rates to rise all while the richest in this country have never had it better. The Government’s actions over its time in office have failed to recognise the depth of the crisis and resulted in a dereliction of duty to those struggling. When will it recognise its obligations and take meaningful, costed, targeted and responsible measures from the Opposition such as the one in this motion to intervene in people’s lives? When will it lead? Will it take a by-election to wake it up or will it stay asleep at the wheel while the financial lives of our citizenry are left to burn?

Sentiment score: -0.11