Press Statement

Preasráiteas

09 June 2022

Go to release: Consumer Price Index May 2022

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (09 June 2022) published the Consumer Price Index May 2022.

Commenting on annual changes shown in the release, Colin Cotter, Statistician in the Prices Division, said: “The latest publication for the Consumer Price Index (CPI) shows that prices for consumer goods and services in May 2022 increased by 7.8% on average compared to May 2021. This follows an increase of 7.0% in the year to April 2022. Prices have been rising on an annual basis since April 2021, with an annual inflation of 5.0% or more recorded each month since October 2021. The annual increase in the CPI to May 2022 is the largest observed in almost 38 years, when annual inflation stood at 7.9% in Q3 1984.

The most significant increases in the year to May 2022 were seen in Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas & Other Fuels which was up 20.9%, and Transport, up 16.5%. Increased energy costs are reflected in the yearly increase of Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas & Other Fuels driven by rises in electricity (+40.9%), gas (+57.1%), liquid fuels/home heating oil (+102.5%) and solid fuels (+25.9%) in the year. The annual change in Transport costs reflects a rise in the cost of diesel (+41.6%), petrol (+25.9%), purchase of motor cars (+13.2%) and airfares (+45.4%) compared to May 2021.

Miscellaneous Goods & Services (-1.8%) and Education (-0.8%) were the only divisions to show a decrease when compared with May 2021.”

Commenting on monthly changes shown in the release, Colin Cotter, Statistician, continued: “Consumer prices in May increased by 0.9% in the month. The divisions with the largest monthly increases were Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas & Other Fuels (+3.7%), Alcoholic Beverages & Tobacco (+2.0%), Clothing & Footwear (+1.7%) and Restaurants & Hotels (+1.1%). The rise in Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas & Other Fuels was due to an increase in the cost of electricity (+10.3%), home heating oil (+13.1%), gas (+6.6%) and higher rents (+1.3%) compared to April 2022.

The largest monthly decrease was seen in Transport (-1.7%) due primarily to lower prices for airfares (-30.1%), bus fares (-14.9%) and rail fares (-20.6%).”

Commenting further, Colin Cotter, added: “National Average Prices for selected CPI goods and services for April 2022 were also made available today by the CSO and show that diesel at €1.89 per litre and petrol at €1.81 per litre were up by 54.1 cent per litre (+40.1%) and 34.9 cent per litre (+23.9%) respectively between April 2021 and April 2022.

Looking at the National Average Prices of some staple items:

• The national average price for bread (large (800g) white sliced pan) was up 12.4 cent in the year to April 2022, while the same size brown sliced pan was up 17.4 cent in the year.
• Spaghetti per 500g increased by 19.3 cent in the year while the average price for 2.5kg of potatoes decreased by 28.5 cent.
• The national average price of a take-home 50cl can of lager at €2.16 was up 27.9 cent on average from April 2021 while a take-home 50cl can of cider at €2.36 was up 14.1 cent.
• In April 2022, the national average price of a pint of stout in licensed premises was €5.12 while a pint of lager was €5.50. As pubs were closed for the CPI collection period in April 2021, annual comparisons for the price of a pint are unavailable.”

The National Average Prices are compiled together with the CPI. The comprehensive list of items included in the National Average Prices and their monthly prices are available at: https://data.cso.ie/table/CPM12 

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is designed to measure the change in the average level of prices paid by households for consumer goods and services. Pre-1997, the CPI was produced on a quarterly basis. Since January 1997 it has been produced monthly. The index measures the change in prices for a fixed basket of goods and services. In order to remain representative of consumer expenditure, the basket of goods and services is updated every five years, known as the rebase, on the basis of the Household Budget Survey (HBS). Items in the basket of goods and services used in 1984 that are no longer included in today’s CPI included Monochrome TV’s, Telegrams and LP records.

Along with updating the items included in the basket, the weights assigned to these items are also updated. Since 2012 this is done annually where previously it was done at rebase only. There are some noticeable changes to weights from 1984 to 2022: Bread was 1.37% of the overall basket in 1984, while in 2022 it is only 0.61%; Rent was 1.18% in 1984, but it now accounts for 7.64% and Petrol & Diesel was 6.09% in 1984 but in 2022 it is 3.71%.

Colin Cotter continued: “The price of energy products was up by 46.3% in the year to May 2022. The last time overall annual inflation was higher than 7.8% was in Q3 1984, when the annual inflation for energy products was +4.8%.”

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