Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik said she would focus on cost-of-living issues for the coming parliamentary term as the think-in season begins, proposing a €100 top-up to child benefit for each child for each month during the winter.
All parties will gather for their own meetings in advance of the Dáil’s return the week after next. Labour is gathering in Galway on Thursday and Friday, with Bacik determined to focus on what she says are Government failings in controlling rising living costs.
“Our focus over the next two days will be on how we can see household bills reduced,” she said. “We want to see hardworking families, hardworking households, hard-pressed households, seeing a reduction in their bills, in their costs, because we know we’re living through a cost-of-living crisis, and this Government has utterly failed to deliver any sort of sustainable reductions in people’s bills.”
She said the party would be making further proposals in advance of the budget, with finance spokesman Ged Nash adding that the party would propose a “€100 shopping supplement for recipients of child benefit to help families through what’s going to be a very, very difficult winter to put food on the table”.
He said that high energy prices would translate into higher food prices.
“We are facing into a very difficult winter indeed, and this is going to be a winter that will be dominated by the energy crisis and the needs to support people with energy bills,” he said.
Later, Nash confirmed that the proposal was for the €100 “shopping supplement” to be applied to each child for three months over the winter, which would cost an estimated €390 million. He said this was less than what the Government has spent extending the excise cuts to fuel.
Bacik said that she wanted Labour to come together with the Social Democrats and the Green Party and “to negotiate a programme for government from that position of collective strength”.
When it was put to her that the proposal had been rebuffed by the Social Democrats, she said that she believed “that in the next election, there will be really clear evidence of that strong appetite for change” which could lead to a left-led government.
“This is not about any one party,” she said. “This is about offering an alternative vision, and that’s what the Labour Party will continue to do.”