Ciaran Hancock

Hello, this is Ciaran Hancock.

Welcome to Inside Business.

This week I'm joined in studio by Cliff Taylor and Conor Pope to talk about rising consumer prices.

A little later Conor Pope will offer some tips on how to reduce your home energy bills.

But first Cliff Taylor reacts to CSO data showing that Irish inflation rose by 3.6% in April.

On the plus side that was the same level as in March but it's still elevated with the prospect of further rises if there's no end in sight to the Middle East conflict.

So I began by asking Cliff to give me his take on the latest inflation figures.

Yeah, so energy prices according to the CSO estimated to have climbed by 15.5% year on year, 2.6% up on the month.

Maybe better news on food prices, up 2% annually and food prices have been rising.

They've been problematic, yeah, over the past year or so.

But up 0.3% on the past month.

So maybe some good news there.

I just wonder in terms of energy prices, the government supports would have been kicking in around that time.

They've been trying to manage that message in the last few days.

At a consumer level, they haven't gone up yet, though.

Now, Bank of Ireland had its latest economic assessment out in the past few days, and they've said, yes, incomes are definitely going to be squeezed as a result of what's going on in the Middle East and higher prices and so on.

But we're not heading for a recession.

Mind you, they did slash their growth forecast for Ireland for this year from 2.8% to 1.6%.

That's quite a substantial drop.

That's Conal McQuilla who's normally on the money in these things.