Paul Murphy launches Affordable Ireland, slams 'rip-off' rents

Thanks a lot. First of all, I want to really thank Seamus Healy for bringing forward this excellent motion. People for Profit obviously fully support it. Next week – it was supposed to be today, but it got cancelled because of the orange weather warning – but next week Seamus, People for Profit, Sinn Féin, other left independents, the Social Democrats, Labour Party, will be launching the Affordable Ireland campaign. That is a campaign that will be launched together with and is supported by and involved with a whole broad coalition of disabled people's organisations, of trade unions, of students' unions, of civil society groups, the Irish Wheelchair Association, the Disability Federation of Ireland, Unite the Union, Ain't Is Na Maclein, the Postgraduate Workers' Union, the Irish Traveller Movement, the National Women's Council, the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed and the Irish Senior Citizens Parliament. What unites us is a determination to make Ireland affordable. We all deserve a country we can afford, not this rip-off republic. Not a society that caters for the wealthy, but leaves everyone else struggling to put food on the table and keep the heat and lighting on. The Affordable Ireland campaign has six very simple demands. To cut energy costs by introducing energy credits and abolishing standing charges. To cut and control grocery prices. For above inflation pay, social welfare benefits and pension rises, including finally introducing a living wage. For an emergency payment for disabled people and carers and a permanent cost of disability payment. To abolish fees for public services, including college, childcare, health and GP care. And finally, to freeze and cap rents and build public housing. We will be on the streets for the first time, as Seamus has mentioned, with a focus on the call for an emergency payment for disabled people and carers, on Saturday 28 February, 1pm at Parnell Square. Because this week already, in the last couple of weeks, any week that you pay attention to, to be honest, but tells us a lesson. This week, we have the rip-off rents bill. Last week, we had the Social Democrats' motion for an emergency winter payment for disabled people shamefully voted down by the government. What is the lesson? Fianna Fáil, Fianna Gael, the Lowry, Lackey independents who prop them up, will not do any of this unless we force them to act. The launch of the Affordable Ireland campaign recognises that fact, that this right-wing government will only take action on the cost of the living crisis if it is forced to do so. Left to their own devices, Fianna Fáil, Fianna Gael and the right-wing independents will do nothing to make Ireland affordable. In fact, they will do the exact opposite. That is what the rip-off rents bill is about. It is about deliberately increasing rents even faster than the already unaffordable rents that we have. That is what the attacks on the poorest in society and disabled people in the budget was about. They are making life harder for ordinary working-class people to have a decent life. They will hike up rents for council tenants, for AHB, for HAP tenants and now for every private tenant as well. They will roll out the red carpet for data centres, which means driving up electricity costs for everybody else. The only way ordinary people's bills are going is up. There are further increases planned to regressive standing charges to fund the expansion of the grid for data centres. The CRU's Price Review 6, published before Christmas, allows for charges for householders to go up by 28% and costs for data centres to go down by 20%. It proves the inextricable connection between the Government abandoning even a verbal commitment to climate action, abandoning the legal targets they have signed up to and making ordinary people pay the price for the cost of living crisis. Real climate action and cost of living action go hand in hand. It is the same as with rents. Ordinary people pay more so that landlords and big business can make more profits. Our loss is their gain. The Government acts like Robin Hood in reverse, stealing from the poor to give to the rich. It is not because they do not have the money. The Government had more than enough money in the Budget to give hundreds of millions of euros and tax breaks to landlords, to developers, to fast food chains, to Google, who walked in the front door of the Department of Finance, had a meeting with the Minister of Finance and said we want to increase the R&D tax credit, a benefit of 300 million for us. Yes, no problem, in the same Budget that you were cutting income for ordinary people. But you never have enough. It is always hard choices for ordinary people. Never enough to ensure that they can afford to live unless, of course, you have an election coming and you want to buy people's votes with a few one-off cost of living payments. We have an unprecedented budget surplus for the Government but at the same time the Oxfam Wealth Report shows the rich of this country are getting richer while the rest are getting poorer. Eleven Irish billionaires with the same wealth as three and a half million Irish adults. That is absolutely obscene and yet the Government refuses to even consider a wealth tax. All of it is enraging, all of it is unfair, all of it is unjust but all of it will continue unless we stop them. That's why we have to mobilise with the Affordable Ireland campaign.