Irish Food Prices Are Rapidly Increasing as People Struggle To Make Ends Meet

Food prices in Ireland reached a record high in September, with an increase of 12.4%

by Zizi Uzuegbu

Consumers are astonished by the daily price increases in foods like fats and oils, bread and cereals, dairy products and eggs, as well as beef and meat products. However, for businesses to earn a living, they must raise their prices because doing otherwise would not be in their best interest. Inflation in food costs is a significant issue to everyone in and out of business, but it also has an impact on an individual’s betterment as cost-of-living statistics continue to rise constantly, and there are more and more homeless individuals.

Many consumers in Ireland believe that the cost of groceries is getting too high because, while worrying about a place to live is an issue, worrying about food to eat shouldn’t be. The inflated food prices always go down or up monthly, but at the rate, the prices are going, many people are concerned that they won’t be able to afford to keep buying groceries. In October, gas rates climbed by 47.11%, while electricity costs started to rise by 33.5%. The Irish people are currently finding it difficult to stay afloat and have remarked that the government isn’t doing enough to support the population of the nation; as a result, many individuals are forced to put in more hours of work because their monthly salaries aren’t increasing at the same rate as prices.

There are more people, including those with jobs, who struggle to get enough food to eat. The increase in inflation exceeded economists’ predictions, which called for a 10% increase. The inflation rate of 10.1% is in line with the 40- year high reached in July and is still significantly higher than the government’s goal rate of 2%. There are thought to be 350,000 persons in Ireland who are food insecure around 7% of the total population, and the high food prices would increase the percentage of Irish people.

The situation has worsened due to the conflict in Ukraine, and the system is still dealing with a significant amount of pricing pressure. Numerous economic and financial sanctions have been imposed on various nations, including Ireland, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These sanctions may have shortor long-term effects on the Irish economy and also gravely affect the situation of electricity, food, and cost of living in Ireland.

by Violet Kemp

Towering over Dame Street in Dublin, less than a two minute walk from the River Liffey, the City Hall is a mightily impressive building. Built between 1769 and 1779 by architect Thomas Cooley and formally the Royal Exchange before becoming Dublin City Hall in 1851, it is one of the most iconic features of Dublin and “a magnificent example of Georgian architecture”, according to the official Dublin City Hall website.

Tuesday evening was a fairly quiet affair, with only half of the seats filled by councillors and local politicians as they steadily and politely ploughed through fifty-six motions over five hours — a slightly less harrowing number than Monday night’s sixty-four. Most of the proceedings at the beginning consisted of the Lord Mayor, Caroline Conroy, talking back and forth with councillors about these motions and their intricacies, somehow managing to give little to nothing away as to what they pertained to.

Some of the councillors present were Daithí Doolan and Micheál MacDonncha from Sinn Fein, as well as Deirdre Heney from Fianna Fáil.

One of the speakers who most stood out to me, John O’Hara, calmly talked about religious institutions and their owning of land in various parts of the city: “There are institutional lands all over the city. There are some parts of the city with quite generous amounts of land… which they can utilise to bring forward money to allow development or improvement in other parts of the city, particularly parts that are more congested with not as much open space, which tend to be less advantaged areas… The idea is to attract spending of assets from areas with lots of green space and institutionalised lands to lend to schools which are not so fortunate.”

Despite the careful civil proceedings, in which councillors seem to be strongly encouraged to exactly follow proceedings and not talk for longer than they should and which, for the most part, they willingly comply with, meetings of the council are not without their dramas. In June 2022, the Office of the Planning Regulator (OPR) refused to attend a city council meeting for the second time in a row.

Councillors were united in calling it “an affront to democracy”. Amidst a murky tangle of laws and planning mishaps, the chief executive of OPR, Owen Keegan, and the council butted heads over schemes to build 100 build-to-rent apartments in various areas of the city.