41% – In the last year, that’s the number of parents who have had to skip meals or reduce their portions so that their kids could have enough to eat.
This is an increase of 12% on the year before. A quarter of all parents have had to borrow money to pay for food, while food banks are used by 1 in 8 parents.
The establishment will say they are outraged by this. They will promise to make changes and say they already have a plan in place.
But these figures shouldn’t surprise anyone. The cost of living crisis has been hammering parents for over three years now. Inequality in Irish society is only getting worse.
While tens of thousands of ordinary people cut back just to feed their kids, the wealth of the richest 1% of Irish society is going up. Ireland is an extremely wealthy country – it’s just concentrated in the hands of a very few.
Not only that, but food corporations and supermarket chains have announced record profits in recent years.
What has the Government done about corporations profiteering? About widespread inequality? About food poverty? About the Irish 1% owning over a quarter of all Irish wealth? Nothing, they’ve done absolutely nothing.
Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and the Greens are happy to see the rich get richer.
People Before Profit think this can’t go on. We stand for:
- price controls on basic food essentials
- wage increases to beat inflation
- guaranteed living wage
- wealth taxes on the very richest, which can be redistributed to help with housing and health crises