Early this month the latest data from retail analysts Kantar Worldpanel confirmed what almost anyone who has gone shopping in Irish supermarkets in recent months knows all too well: the cost of living crisis is not over and things are actually getting worse.<\/p>\n
Its monthly research showed that the rate at which grocery prices are climbing in Ireland has more than doubled in the past 12 months, with prices in supermarkets going up at a rate of 4.96 per cent compared with the same 12-week period last year.<\/p>\n
When Kantar went shopping this time last year, the annualised rate of inflation it recorded was closer to 2.5 per cent.<\/p>\n
There are \u2013 of course \u2013 several ways to look at these numbers. <\/p>\n
Grocery inflation of 4.9 per cent is undoubtedly worse than a rate of 2.5 per cent but it is dramatically better than the rate of about 17 per cent Kantar ecorded at the height of the crisis in early summer 2023.<\/p>\n
Shoppers might be forgiven, then, for thinking that things are better than they once were. But that would be quite wrong. <\/p>\n
[\u00a0Consumer despair at food inflation: \u2018Working people can\u2019t afford to eat in one of the supposedly richest countries in the world\u2019<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n [\u00a0Supermarket prices up almost 5 per cent in 12 months new data showsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n For a household that spends \u20ac200 a week on groceries, a 5 per cent increase is costing them an extra \u20ac500 a year. But that 5 per cent comes on top of \u2013 and not instead of \u2013 all the other savage spikes that have been recorded over the past four years. That means many families are now down about \u20ac3,000 on 2021 on their supermarket spending alone. <\/p>\n Every couple of months since early 2022, when the cost of living crisis started in earnest, Pricewatch has been tracking the price of a basket of 25 items typically found in Irish supermarket shops. When we last did out supermarket sweep, in April, the basket that once cost \u20ac87.06 cost us \u20ac115.93, a jump of 33 per cent. <\/p>\n We had a look at just five of the products last week. Brennans Bread, which cost \u20ac1.87 in 2022, costs \u20ac1.99 now. A two-litre carton of Avonmore milk, which cost \u20ac1.99, now costs \u20ac2.69. A 200g jar of Nescaf\u00e9 coffee, which cost \u20ac6.50, is now \u20ac7.15. A kilogramme of chicken breasts that could have been bought for \u20ac4.99 then, costs \u20ac11 now; and a kilogramme of sirloin steak that cost \u20ac10.66 was selling for \u20ac22.56 last week. <\/p>\n Someone buying just these five items every week will spend \u20ac45.39, which, spread over the course of the next 12 months will cost \u20ac2,360.28. By contrast, the weekly spend on these items in 2022 was \u20ac26.01 or \u20ac1,352.52.<\/p>\n What is going on? <\/p>\n According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), the consumer price index has climbed by just over 20 per cent over the past four years while grocery prices have climbed by closer to 40 per cent. <\/p>\n Oliver Browne, a lecturer in the UCC economics department, has a personal and professional interest in how we spend our money and the globalisation of markets around food in particular and how that affects our daily lives.<\/p>\n He is self-deprecating when talking about the role economists play in discussing what might be coming down the tracks, and recalls Dara \u00d3 Briain once roasting a professor of economics who happened to be sitting in the front row of one of his shows. <\/p>\n \u201cHe basically said economics was the wishy-washiest of all the sciences and one which explains to people why something has happened after it has happened but we won\u2019t tell you it is going to happen beforehand.\u201d<\/p>\n For all its failings, it is a useful guide to working out where we are and where we might be going. <\/p>\n Browne says we are in the middle of a perfect storm and almost everything that could go wrong \u2013 from wars in Ukraine and Gaza to the climate crisis and the dizzying uncertainty caused by the Trump tariffs<\/a> \u2013 has gone wrong. <\/p>\n