Over the past year or so, like many people, I have watched the cost of butter creep inexorably upwards. A review of some old weekly shopping receipts tells me that in March of 2024, a pound of Kerrygold’s finest (no oil-based spreads in this house, thank you very much) has risen from €3.50 to €5.50 in the brand-name supermarket that supplies the McGuirk household. You can obtain butter elsewhere for less, but not by a whole lot less. That’s an almost 50% rise in the cost of a staple good over the last calendar year. The income in this house, let me tell you, has not risen at the same rate.
My wife and I talk in glum terms, quite often, about what we refer to as “the €50 rule”. That means, in essence, that while it is technically possible to leave the house and go to the local town without spending at least fifty quid, it is increasingly hard. You could just about live frugally if you bought only ingredients, and did most of the cooking at home yourself. Some people have time for that seven days a week. Not us.
I am conscious that I’m writing here from a position of relative privilege, as well: We are DINKS – double income, no kids – and we both have what would be considered relatively good jobs. Despite the increasing pressures on cash, there are many hundreds of thousands of Irish families in much worse positions than ours. Most especially those with two or three or four children, a mortgage or rent to pay, and two parents working, necessitating childcare.
What’s more, I am not sure that the full extent of people’s financial struggles in this Irish economy is appreciated or even admitted. This is particularly true of middle class taxpayers, where admitting to hardship is a stigma in and of itself.
I was speaking to one man this week, close enough of a friend to talk to me about such things, who “almost snapped”, he said, when a request came home from school for €50 to fund a school outing. I was shocked, because I thought he and his wife were doing well, and said as much to him. “Well on paper”, he said in response. “But day to day I have to check every penny I spend to make sure we don’t run out by the end of the month”.
I do not think he is alone.
The Government, we are told, will do nothing specifically to alleviate the pressure on families in this year’s budget. Indeed, the Taoiseach has specifically ruled out a targeted cost-of-living package in this year’s set of accounts. That means no repeat of previous years goodies, like a set of credits on your ESB bill to help you through the cold winter.
Economically, this makes sense, annoying though it is: Officially, the inflation rate in Ireland this year is just 1.8% year on year. That is a healthy number. The problem is that while the increase in costs has slowed, the massive inflation of 2023 and 2024 has not been reversed: A great many families are still paying 2025 bills on 2022 salaries.
Pumping a bunch of money directly into people’s pockets to deal with the cost of living in recent years, you’ll note, hasn’t actually done anything to reduce the cost of living. It has simply cushioned the impact of the pain families have been subjected to. But that’s a very inefficient way to spend public money: It doesn’t build anything or generate a return. It is literally just throwing cash into a black hole of spending, and probably making inflation slightly worse at the margins.
But the Government deciding not to do anything to help people this year would only be defensible if there was some kind of obvious and coherent economic strategy to bring down the cost of living in the medium term. And frankly, there is not one.
This is especially so because of the amount of the cost of living which is directly attributable to the Irish Government.
ESB bills alone, for example, are amongst the highest in Europe. This is a direct result of the Government explicitly favouring expensive energy over cheap energy, shuttering gas power plants in favour of subsidised windmills, and making power more scarce in the process. On fuel, Government taxes have Irish people paying some of the most expensive oil and fuel bills in the western world. Dublin Hotels are as expensive as they are as a direct result of the Government commandeering so much of the tourist sector for migrant accommodation. Insurance costs are still shunted higher by Government taxes and levies. Competition in that sector, as well as in most financial services, is limited.
And of course, the housing crisis that Government policy has foisted on the country does not help.
Across this country, real people are not just feeling the pinch. They are feeling excruciating economic pain. Many of them, in my experience, are suffering in silence. On paper, this is a rich country. In practice, the absence of a Government bailout for families this winter may well be devastating.
That is an indictment of the political record. One we do not talk about enough. A pound of butter should not cost €5.50.