Fianna Fáil TD for Laois-Offaly Barry Cowen has called for a new social partnership arrangement between unions, employers and the government to tackle inflation.
Barry Cowen also said the Competitiveness Council and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission need to "challenge and interrogate" issues of price increases.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, Deputy Cowen said they need to act as guard dogs rather than watch dogs.
"Looking at energy costs, looking at insurance costs, labour market shortages, delays in relation to the provision of work permits," he said.
He said these are all "contributing factors to the stalemate that can get bogged down in inflation and leave our economy less competitive than it needs to be to take advantage of the options that will be there in a post pandemic recovery".
Barry Cowen said the Commission needs to be careful not to "get into the spiral" of chasing a claim on a daily basis and use the tools available within the economy to ensure there is "much more robust" questioning of price increases.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
He said a commitment was made some time ago to recognise the ability of the carbon tax revenue to make an imprint in relation to retrofitting programmes.
It was essential, he said, that policy initiatives and provisions were made to move in that direction and to assist people who are at the coalface in relation to energy costs to make improvements.
