His problem is not so much with the cost-of-living bit – he acknowledges prices across the board have increased – but with the use of the term “crisis”. “There’s no denying the cost of living has gone up but that’s only an issue if your income hasn’t gone up simultaneously,” the head of the State’s main business lobby group says. Take workers on the minimum wage, he says, they’ve seen their income increase by 7.
6 per cent in 2023 and 12.4 per cent this year. “That’s cumulatively 20 per cent.
Prices haven’t gone up 20 per cent,” McCoy says. He makes a similar point about welfare recipients and welfare rates, which have risen faster than prices, 4-6 per cent on average in each of the last three budgets. “How can you describe that as a crisis,” he says.
Outside of these Government-controlled incomes, McCoy points to the double-digit growth in income tax returns flowing into the exchequer, which, he says, can’t be fully explained by rising levels of employment and must, at least in part, reflect a general uplift in incomes. According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), wages (as measured by average weekly earnings) rose at an annual rate of 5.6 per cent in second quarter of this year while headline inflation was clocked at 2 per cent, down from a high of 9.
3 per cent in late 2022. McCoy also points to €158 billion held by Irish households in overnight deposit accounts (instant-access accounts making little or no interest). On average that.
