Will cheap oil provide relief for hard-pressed households?

Over the course of 2015, energy prices dropped a stone bringing huge short-term benefits, in the process, to the Irish economy. Over the past few months, however, this trend has gone into reverse.

Could we be about to experience the sort of rebound in energy prices that causes consumers here to shed the economic gains that we have started to take for granted?

Last February, the price of crude oil touched $25 a barrel down from a peak of around $150 in the middle of 2014.