Cost of Living

Energy prices spiked after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, reaching a peak in August that year

Re-Turn scheme: A reader shares her negative experience of returning plastic bottles, and another wonders whether ‘the whole thing is pointless’

Wild Geese: Claire Molloy, Munich

The charity - marking its 180th anniversary this year - relies on 10,000 volunteers to help the most disadvantaged cope with the rising cost of living and soaring rents

The counterargument that it has always been extremely difficult to afford a house ignores reality, says economics professor

Signing up for crypto from an article on Facebook about a TV personality making money, led to the inevitable ending

Operating profits fall 71.6% at co-op as it focused on efforts to support prices paid to its dairy farmer members

New law proposed by Government is in conflict with legislation introduced in 2018 to drive down drinking, particularly among young people, review says

Many 18-30 year olds have expressed concerns about their ability to meet the financial challenges involved in securing their own home or starting a family

Youth Council warns of ‘long-term impacts on social cohesion if young people feel increasingly alienated, unsupported and deprived of opportunities’

Pricewatch: The rise of online shopping has led to greater demands being placed on delivery companies and their drivers, resulting in more problems for customers

Increased profits, increased employment, a below-average insolvency rate: this doesn’t look like any kind of crisis

Tánaiste also promises to ban children using smartphones during school hours

The ECB currently expects that euro zone inflation, which was running at 2.4 per cent last month, will reach its target by the middle of next year

Price of package holidays increased almost 40%, and restaurants and hotels by 5.5%

Pricewatch Extra: A reader, Ann, bought items on the retailer’s website in March and they arrived two days later. Just by opening the box, though, things started to go wrong

Pricewatch: Two people highlight their concerning experiences with the company

Pricewatch: Reader was trying to book a villa in Ibiza when he was deceived by a legitimate-looking advert

The State was ranked ninth among 33 major economies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in PwC report

Mortgage-switching activity ratcheted up sharply when European Central Bank raised rates for first time in more than a decade

Big majority of firms plan to increase salaries this year but many pulling back on recruitment, survey indicates

Pricewatch: More than 16 million containers have been returned already but some consumers are having difficulty finding working machines to take their returns

Can Pricewatch help our reader after a ‘saga’ that has produced in her a fear of losing vital services?

Fall-off in inflation is welcome but pressure from higher energy and food prices remains

Inside Business podcast with Ciarán Hancock

Eurostat’s latest flash estimate of the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the currency bloc as a whole was 2.4% in March

Irish shoppers spent €25m on Easter eggs as on-brand label products perform well for supermarkets

Headline price growth in economy falls to 1.7% in March, according to CSO’s harmonised index of consumer prices

Pricewatch: Customers across the country are routinely let down, mislead and ghosted, so we’ve put together a guide to make you the best complainer you can possibly be

Lobby group FFI has called for an expert group to be established to examine fiscal policies relating to energy and for further excise duty increases to be paused until the next budget

ECB’s policymaker Yannis Stournaras made the comments in a newspaper interview released on Sunday

Increase in excise due on Monday is to be followed by further increases in August

Largest monthly declines were recorded in motor trades, department stores and clothing, footwear and textiles

Customers receive message from bank stating that after March 31st Android phones operating on version 10 or older will no longer be supported

Pricewatch: A reader had paid for a day’s parking at Dublin’s Heuston Station but after a day trip to Kerry she returned to her car to find it had been clamped

Pricewatch: A reader’s donation of spare virtual change to the Red Cross led to her unwittingly giving, over a period of several months, a sum she could not afford

Pricewatch: A scammer claiming to be from the e-money app emptied a reader’s account, leaving it in the red, resulting in debt-collection threats from Revolut

Q&A: Family suffering the same cost of living pressures as everyone else is told they do not qualify for relief from surging interest rates

Airlines charge exorbitant fees on name changes to stop people speculating on flights

Anna Waters left Dublin to live in Palermo for a ‘kind of life available here that has been squeezed out of my home town’