Sinn Féin has called for the Government to immediately boost social welfare payments to help people with the soaring cost of living. 

Last month inflation hit 8.2% and reports circulated that the Government could introduce a ‘Christmas-bonus style’ package of welfare measures. However, Taoiseach Micheál Martin denied the story and said that people would have to wait until the autumn budget for more help. 

“We can’t chase it [the crisis] month to month,” he said. 

“However, anything we do in the budget around cost of living - quite a significant amount of it - will have immediate application.” 

The Taoiseach Micheál Martin on his way into Cabinet. Image: Sam Boal/RollingNews

Sinn Féin say people cannot wait until then: 

“They need to do it now because people’s crisis that they’re having in their own personal finances doesn’t just wait because the Taoiseach wants another four months to figure out what to do,” finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty told On The Record with Gavan Reilly. 

“People who never thought they would find themselves queueing for food parcels find themselves in that situation.” 

He said an emergency budget should boost spending on welfare to help people on fixed incomes: 

“It doesn’t take four months to sit down and say, ‘Yes, look, we need to actually increase social welfare payments,’” he continued. 

“That doesn’t take four months, that doesn’t take think tanks or research or consultants to figure out that people on fixed incomes have seen inflation rise, the cost of living increase and therefore to actually keep them in line, to make sure these families don’t get any poorer, we need to increase their weekly working age payment by about €7.50.” 

18/06/2022 Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald during the Cost of Living protests outside the Dáil.  Photograph: Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie

Such measures, he added, could be paid for by increasing taxes on the wealthy: 

“We want a 3% solidarity tax on incomes above €140,000. 

“We want to take away tax credits when you start to reach €100,000 - similar to what happens in Britain and the north. 

“We want to introduce a 40% rate on CGT on individual incomes above half a million - similar to what Biden has done in America. 

“So they’re some of the revenue raising measures which actually will benefit [us] in terms of dampening inflation with those who have enough to get by and inflation isn’t impacting on them in the same way.”  

More popular than Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil combined 

Sinn Féin has maintained a consistent lead in the polls throughout 2022 and is currently more popular than Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil combined. 

A Red C poll for the Sunday Business Post found that 36% of people would vote for it in a General Election and the paper’s Political Editor Michael Brennan said it was due to public unhappiness with the Government’s response to the cost of living crisis: 

“I think that [crisis] is definitely a key factor,” he told Newstalk. 

“They are highlighting the struggles people have and how difficult people are finding it to afford things at the moment. 

“And the Government message of ‘Wait until the October budget’ - there’s reasons for that but it is not a very [popular] thing to tell people and Sinn Féin are definitely on the right side of that argument.”

Main image: Pearse Doherty. Picture by: RollingNews.ie