Mr. Brendan O'Connor:

I do not disagree that certain products are probably the subject of high rates of inflation. Regarding the aggregate for food, I am just looking at the March data. In March, inflation stood at 6.9%. Food price inflation contributed about one percentage point in total to that. Energy contributed approximately four percentage points which brings it up to five percentage points between food and energy. Obviously, goods and services make up the extra two percentage points to make 6.9%. That is the average. Obviously in every month there will be some items in any given basket with very strong rates of inflation, for instance the ones the Deputy has mentioned. There will be some that will experience decreases. On aggregate, for food and non-energy staples we are not yet experiencing very high rates of inflation. I certainly would expect to see food prices rising over time, particularly given that the price of wheat has increased by 44% and with very high rates of inflation for things like fertiliser, which has increased by 75%. In fairness, we have relatively strong projections for core inflation, non-energy inflation, of about 4% this year anyway. That would probably tally with what the Deputy is saying. We are expecting to see it in an aggregate sense later.