The Social Democrats have called for an immediate emergency budget to deal with increases in the cost of living, insisting that “people can’t wait until October” for further measures to assist them with rising costs.
The party’s co-leaders Róisín Shortall and Catherine Murphy made the call at the party’s conference in Dublin on Saturday.
“People are struggling to put food on the table,” Ms Murphy said.
Ms Shortall said Government finances were benefiting from rising prices through VAT and other taxes. “People are in dire straits now,” she said, “and the Government needs to act to help those who are most hard hit by the rising cost of living.”
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Ms Shortall said the energy companies should be hit with a windfall tax to finance the additional supports that the Social Democrats were calling for. She said the party was calling for refundable tax credits, so that “everyone earning under €50,000 would get a payment of €300 through the tax system”.
She said there should be an “emergency €100 million fund” to supplement the current community welfare fund, which helps families and individuals in need on a discretionary basis. And Ms Shortall also called for an immediate €10 per week increase for all social welfare payments.
Ms Murphy added that all special welfare payments and emergency supports needed to be “targeted”. She said for many people experiencing difficulties dealing with cost-of-living increases, there was a “sense of panic” that costs were going to increase further beyond what they could bear.
In televised leaders’ speeches to the party conference, both co-leaders criticised the Government for failures in housing, healthcare, support for people with disabilities and climate action.
Ms Murphy said that housing was supposedly the biggest priority for Government. “It’s also its biggest failure.”
She said that in previous decades, “single-income families with one worker on an average wage could aspire to lead a decent life. They may not have been rich — but many owned their own home; they could educate their children; and they had secure jobs.
“Today, single people are forced to continue to live at home, house share or rent tiny apartments at exorbitant costs until they are in their 30s, 40s and even older. Older people worry about where they’ll live when they retire — and how they’ll pay for it. Even couples, on what were once considered decent wages, are locked out of home ownership.”
Ms Shortall criticised the Government for the slow pace of reform and the delayed introduction of the Sláintecare plan for a single-tier public health service. “Why is there such resistance to reform? Who stands to benefit? Because it’s not the Irish people,” she said. “The full implementation of Sláintecare in the term of the next government will be a red line for our participation in that government.”
