Charlie Weston

Charlie Weston, personal finance editor of the Irish Independent.

Well, if you look at everything, Matt, and you go back the last five years, it's about 25%.

Why did I go back five years?

It's because in the last five years, we have had rapid inflation.

We have had 25% overall, as I say, it kind of dates to 2000.

post-COVID when there were bottlenecks in supply and also, obviously, the Russians' second invasion of Ukraine.

That created an energy crisis which had a knock-on effect everywhere.

But the previous 10 years to that, Matt, if you go back to pre-2021,

with hardly any inflation.

It was about 5% over that period.

But in the last five years, it's really gone up.

So what I did was I went into the Central Statistics Office inflation figures and I picked out a number of items and just looked at how they'd changed in price over the last five years.

And, you know, these are standard things that are bought by a household.

Electricity, up 57% in that five years.

So back in 2021, in April 21, people were probably paying about €1,200.

It's up to nearly €1,800 at the moment.

Diesel.

Anybody with a diesel car.

I could have looked at petrol as well, but there's only so many items I could have looked at.

Diesel prices are up 60%.