1924

Cost of living

The failure of the Dáil Commission on food prices in the Free State has long since been apparent. One outcome of this failure has been to give a new lease of life to abnormal living costs, and, as a consequence, to continue over one of the most difficult periods in the history of the State.

Unemployment and distress are largely traceable to the cost of living, for its immediate effect is to maintain high wages, and high wages assuredly means less employment and less work in a poor country., and abnormal costs means there is less ‘free’ money for circulation.

After the period of somnolence that followed the failure of the Commission, the people of the Free State are once more awakening to the urgent need for reducing living costs and it behoves the Government to take effective action without further delay.

Ireland is in the happy position that it produces much more than it consumes in farm produce, yet some of the food produced in our fields is 100 to 200 per cent. dearer when it reaches the town workers table than when it left the farm.

Pictured: Music at the senior citizens’ party in Woodford on January 6, 1971.