180. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance whether, in view of higher inflation than his predecessor predicted prior to the budget, he will bring in an emergency supplementary budget before Christmas to reinstate cost-of-living payments; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [69658/25]

Sentiment score: -0.12

The Tánaiste's predecessor, Paschal Donohoe, said that there was no need for cost-of-living payments in the budget because “inflation has now returned to normal rates”. He said that inflation would be around 2% this year. That is clearly not the case. We have over 4% food price inflation and 3.3% energy price inflation. It is going to be a cold hard Christmas for many people. At this very late stage, I am asking the Tánaiste to bring forward emergency cost-of-living payments.

Sentiment score: -0.02

The truth is we are going to have the highest inflation rates in two years. They are not back to the extremely high rates we saw before that, but they are high. The whole premise upon which the Government justified not continuing with the cost-of-living payments was that inflation had returned to normal rates. There was a logic set out that has been confounded by reality, yet the Government is sticking with its position of no return of one-off payments. The Minister knows that the impact of the withdrawal of one-off payments was very hard for the poorer sections of society. As a result of getting rid of the one-off payments, the bottom 10% lost 4.4% of their income. The next 10% lost 3.9%, so there were huge cuts in income and then particularly cruel, savage cuts reserved for disabled people of about €1,400 per year.

Sentiment score: -0.18