CURRENT ACCOUNT: The Government has never tired of boasting about the State's speedy economic growth, stressing again and again that the expansion was among the fastest in the developed world. But recent growth has come at a price for consumers, who are faced with the highest inflation in Europe.
Worrying this undoubtedly is - and not just because Guinness costs more in Blackrock, Dublin, than St Tropez on the Côte d'Azur. This finding, in a price survey, put flesh on EU figures this week which showed euro-zone inflation subsiding to the 2 per cent ceiling for the first time this year. The Irish rate remained way ahead at 5 per cent.
Such figures will prompt the conclusion that projections of a significant slowdown in inflation were optimistic beyond the call of duty. Cue trouble then for the Government, sooner into the re-election honeymoon than it might have anticipated. With the benchmarking review of public sector remuneration expected to contain "pain" and a social partnership negotiation due in autumn, pay might yet dominate the agenda.
Thus did the business lobby IBEC add its voice this week to a Central Bank warning on inflation. Now there is always an incentive for the employers to urge wage moderation. But the burghers of Baggot Street fear a cycle of pay chasing prices with unhappy implications for real income. That seems logical, though only as far as it goes.
It is unlikely to spike the guns of the trade unions, whose members are faced with remorselessly high property prices and creeping rises in the cost of day-to-day goods. Indeed, they might just say that business can be a beneficiary of rising prices.
With a safe Dáil majority in the bag, however, it is likely that the Finance Minister Mr McCreevy will cite concern about inflation - and the public finances - when faced with testy wage demands.
Perhaps businesses, many of them IBEC members, might try a dose of competitive pricing. According to Retail Intelligence, the same basket of supermarket goods in Blackrock costs €296.31 - and €232.82 in St Tropez. Strange, although it must be said that RGDATA, which represents retailers, has queried the findings.
