High food prices in Ireland — farmers are not the culprits

Firstly, the good news — the rate of increase in food prices in Ireland since 2005 is the lowest of all EU member states.

The bad news?

We were still 18% above the European average in recently-published EU data on consumer prices in all 27 member states (and in a few other European countries also). Data are published for goods and services which account for nearly two thirds of household expenditure. In this broad category, prices in Ireland were 17% above the EU-27 average in 2011.