Election 2024: Each major party’s stance on the cost of living crisis

Ava Keady

Voices from Ireland’s political parties explain their stance on the cost of living crisis.

With just days to go until the general election takes place, the JOE team have pulled together some of the leading voices within the political parties asking for your vote.

We asked them to explain in 60 seconds or less, their / their party’s plan for each of the most debated topics coming to the election.

The discussed topics include housing, Palestine, immigration, the Apple windfall, housing, and climate change.

In regards to the cost of living crisis, the candidates answered as follows:

Fianna Fáil – Micheál Martin

“We understand that people are under a lot of pressure, and families in particular, and we in Fianna Fáil want to help every family through tax reductions, payments and reducing the cost of public services, particularly the health care costs.

“Expanding the IVF public treatment service for example, reducing the cost of childcare to €50 a week, reducing the Drug Payment Threshold Scheme to €40, but above all, to get energy prices down through changing the legal framework that governs the regulator, governs how prices are set for energy.

“And then to get the prices of goods on shelves down by reducing costs on the supply chain from getting the product from the factory to the shelf to get the costs down on that journey. Hauliers and so on are involved, and we need to do that.”

Sinn Fein – Eoin Ó Broin

“The cost of living crisis hasn’t gone away, workers and families are materially worse off now than they were when Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael took office four and a half years ago. Sinn Féin has a range of measures to address this cost of living crisis.

“We’d abolish the Universal Social Charge on the first €45,000 of each individual’s earnings. We’d also introduce a range of measures to assist people with childcare, rents, mortgages and health care.

“We need to bring the cost of living down and ensure work pays and working people have money in their pockets at the end of the month.”

Fine Gael – Neale Richmond

“There’s no point in me sitting here and telling everyone the economy is doing brilliant if you’re still struggling at the end of the week to pay for your groceries or pay for college. We understand that, we get it.

“The economy is doing well, but we have responsibility in government to make sure you feel it. And that’s why Fine Gael has plans to make sure that some of the once off measures become permanent. We’re going to completely abolish student fees. We’re going to cap childcare at €200 per month per child.

“We’re going to double child benefit in the month of August to help with kids going back to college. We’re going to make sure that we make energy cheaper for you. We want to make sure that the benefits of our economy reach everyone.”

Social Democrats – Gary Gannon

“From their very inception, the Social Democrats made it very clear that we do not believe that tax cuts would increase anyone’s capacity to provide for the type of things that impact your cost of living. Childcare for example, the Social Democrats believe in a publicly funded model of childcare.

“But we also know that there’s an immediacy so we would cap fees at a maximum of €250 per month and at the same time, we’ll start to build the public infrastructure we need so we can have our crèches in state ownership and state care.”

The Green Party – Neasa Hourigan

“The cost of living since 2020 has been a massive problem for people. We’ve seen huge inflation because of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The Green Party very much believe that Ireland looking to become more independent to terms with the energy sector would be a long-term approach on this.

“We could be the generator within Europe on renewable energy. We have the opportunity to access wind generation for example, unlike anything else, and we could be a huge exporter of that kind of energy, as well as tackling the cost of living. In real terms, we have reduced the cost of very specific things within people’s lives like transport.

“We have reduced the cost of transport by 60% for young people, by 20% for everybody else, and made transport free for those under nine. We believe those are real cost savings and into the future people will really see how green measures actually dovetailed with cost of living interests.”

Labour Party – Darragh Moriarty

“The cost of living is too high. We in Labour have proposed significant costed measures in our manifesto to drive down the cost of living. This government, what they have done instead, is throw money at problems.

“Throw money like confetti at you to try and chase inflation. Give you that will, you know, melt away as quick as they’re given. What we want to do is radically bring down the cost of energy bills.

“We want to radically bring down the cost of the weekly shop. We want to support people. The biggest, most difficult issue in the cost of living is housing costs, people’s unaffordable rents. We want a rent freeze, we want to drive down the cost of rent.

“People’s unaffordable mortgages that they can’t pay. We want working wages to go further so that working families can afford their mortgages better. Those are the real measures that we need instead of chasing inflation, throwing money at problems, we need to drive down the costs, tackle the cost at the root cause.”

People before Profit – Paul Murphy

“The cause of the cost of living crisis, which almost nobody talks about, is profiteering. Internationally, in Europe and in Ireland, there are multiple studies that about two thirds of the prices increases that you in terms of fuel, in terms of transport, in terms of grocery prices, two thirds of those price increases are caused by profiteering.

“Corporate prices in this country have tripled over the past ten years, while wages have remained stagnant. If you want to deal with the cost of living crisis, you have to tackle the profiteering.

“That means price controls on essential goods, price controls on electricity, on fuel, on transport, key groceries, and it means renationalising the energy sector in order to use the ESB, which makes massive profits.

“Use that to bring prices down, to put it on a not for profit basis, as opposed to running it on a commercial basis, where it made a billion euro in profits last year, and it legally can’t use those to reduce people’s energy bills.”

Independent – Clare Daly

“People in this city are absolutely crucified under the massive cost of living crisis that we have. This is government driver. They have taken no steps to alleviate the crisis. We have a situation now where the top 1% in our country have 26 times more wealth than the bottom 50%. There’s no need for the type of pressures the people are being faced with. The government could intervene to make sure we have a much fairer system.”