Indo - "There is no cost of living crisis for majority of people in Ireland says IBEC CEO"

odyssey06 said:
(Neither - it's Cork. Well maybe we'll have to build a wall around it.)
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Fair point.
Okay, so I take it that you are against across the board cost of living mitigation measures in the budget and in favour of the Nation getting behind those who really need the help. If so you're agreeing with Danny.
odyssey06 said:
Edit - You don't just spend it where's there are problems. You should try tackling root causes - both because it is cheaper and may have wider benefits to society. Specific mitigation measures in hardest hit areas may be needed.
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That's what Danny said. I agree with him.
They are going up for everyone but that's only a problem for a minority. Therefore we should help that minority. That's what Danny said.
 
T McGibney said:
I suspect that Danny, God bless him, wouldn't know an SME if one of them bit him on the bum.

IBEG have bigger fish to fry than common SMEs.
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Yep, IBEC are a way of getting Multinationals into the Social Partnership tent. They are a pointless talking shop with no connection to real indigenous business and industry.
 
Purple said:
Okay, so I take it that you are against across the board cost of living mitigation measures in the budget and in favour of the Nation getting behind those who really need the help. If so you're agreeing with Danny.
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Nope. I don't know how you got that from his speech either. You seem to have read a different one to the ones given.
What mitigation measures, targeted or otherwise, did he advocate for recently? Were any of them for sections of society outside the lobby he is well paid to represent?

Specific targeted measures have a place. Across the board cost of living mitigation measures have a place too, depending on the 'filtering' costs of applying targeted measures. But also because wider mitigation measures may have wider benefits to society.
Tackling root cause would be preferable to both.
It is not good for our society in the long run to be caught in such a cycle.

Asked and answered below:
You don't just spend it where's there are problems. You should try tackling root causes - both because it is cheaper and may have wider benefits to society. Specific mitigation measures in hardest hit areas may be needed.
In cost of living terms, that means looking at why they are going up instead of pretending nothing needs to be done because of semantics over the word 'crisis' as McCoy seems to suggest - or maybe he was just trying to get help for SMEs only, hard to tell through the waffle.
Prices are going up, food prices especially more than the base rate of inflation. Is there a lack of competition somewhere in the chain and companies are taking advantage of the price increases?
Ditto for energy prices etc
 
I agree the media, and the opposition political parties, can blow this way out of proportion. It's their job, regardless of hue.

What defines a 'cost of living' crisis? Hard to define.

I would suggest that there must be some long-term data detailing the extent of poverty in the country? It's when that long-term data begins to increase, year-in, year-out, that it could arguably stated that there is a crisis. As long as the numbers caught in poverty traps keeps increasing then the question must arise, where, when will it stop? In the absence of an answer, that is a crisis.
 
If that’s the metric then there’s definitely no crisis.
 
There is clearly no poverty crisis, because of elaborate (and sooner or later unaffordable - just look at the current state of the UK economy in the absence there of a multinational tax boom) social provision, but that doesn't mean thar we don't have a cost of living crisis nor a cost of doing business crisis.
 
T McGibney said:
There is clearly no poverty crisis, because of elaborate (and sooner or later unaffordable - just look at the current state of the UK economy in the absence there of a multinational tax boom) social provision,
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Agreed.
T McGibney said:
but that doesn't mean that we don't have a cost of living crisis nor a cost of doing business crisis.
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I agree; one doesn't correlate with the other but the national habit of catastrophising everything, of crying wolf, makes such pronouncements suspect.
 
T McGibney said:
There is another very dirty national habit in this country of castigating any public figure who says anything, on literally any subject, that questions or deviates from national conventional wisdom and it's underlying assumptions.
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Yep, it reminds me of when Conor Skehan, the head of the Housing Executive, a man who has been homeless himself, said that people were gaming the system the response from the left wing establishment was to attack him and call for his resignation rather than examine the veracity of his claims given that he was and is an expert on the subject.
 
odyssey06 said:
Prices are going up, food prices especially more than the base rate of inflation. Is there a lack of competition somewhere in the chain and companies are taking advantage of the price increases?
Ditto for energy prices etc
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It's all goes back to energy and government interference in energy markets, we have the highest energy prices in Europe. Our electricity prices are so high because of the huge subsidies and guaranteed prices for renewable energy, they reap all the profits whereas the consumer needs to pay for all the costs of grid stability and other energy sources like power stations when renewables not available.
When you hear of farmers being offered 1000 euros an acre for solar farm leases, that shows you the guaranteed profits that these companies are making. This also distorts the normal leasing for agricultural use which pushes up food prices indirectly. The unforeseen consequences that our establishment is famous for. Also why nobody wants to build a conventional power station which are bqdly needed aswell.

Also among the highest for fuel in EU due to very high carbon taxes. Because food production is energy intensive all those increased costs are fed back through large price increases for groceries and staples.

Then you have enforced government bureaucracy and regulations on business and a load of government quangos that feed off all of this bureaucracy which is another inflationary force
 
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