Readers are angry at the price of a pint and the cost of parking, writes Conor Popein the first of a Thursday series looking at the cost of summer in Ireland.
According to a survey recently published by a travel company, Dublin is the fourth most expensive capital city in the world to have a weekend break, with only Paris, New York and Amsterdam proving dearer.
The Travelcare survey based its costs on a two-night stay, including double-room accommodation in a four-star hotel. It also factored in the cost of a taxi from the airport to the city centre; a sightseeing bus tour; a one-day city transport pass; entrance to a major museum; a coffee; a pint of Guinness; a Big Mac; and a three-course hotel meal.
London, Barcelona, Rome and Copenhagen worked out cheaper than Dublin, although the open-top bus tours in the other locations are probably a whole lot more exciting than in our capital.
Whatever about the cost of the rest of the items on the Travelcare list, the fact that a pint of Guinness (which is brewed less than two kilometres from the GPO on O'Connell Street) costs more in most Dublin pubs than it does in those scattered throughout the rest of the world is truly shocking, even when the swingeing tax rates which apply here are taken into account. It's not surprising then that a number of Irish Times readers have been in touch to question the high cost of a pint in the Republic.
"Going out for a few drinks is ridiculously expensive, especially in any city centre," wrote one reader. "A certain pub in Dublin tried to charge me 5.90 for a pint of Guinness! I walked out and haven't set foot in the place since."
Fran Cluskey, from Dublin, was similarly struck by pub prices and got in touch to share her "outrage". She was in a Dalkey pub last weekend, and although the sun was shining she found her mood darkening after she was asked to hand over 5.70 for a pint of Bulmers. "It was in normal hours - no late-night bar extension," she writes.
While the high cost of drinking in the Republic is well-documented, the high cost of parking is less so. David McClean was able to do a mini parking price comparison of his own recently and sent us the results.
While on holiday in Majorca, he was called on to collect some friends from Palma airport. When his new arrivals had collected their luggage, they were "whisked by moving walkway to the car park". They briefly argued about who would pick up the parking tab, as it is right and proper to do, and McClean won. He paid the parking fee, which amounted to 20 cent, a sum so small as to make the previous good-natured argument seem a little ridiculous.
A week on and McClean was back in dear damp Dublin, where he found himself once more acting the chauffeur. On this occasion he was collecting his son from Dublin airport, and once the pair had fought their way through the crowds in the arrivals hall to the car park, he was dismayed to be charged 3 for less than an hour's parking.
"I can't help feeling that we are all being 'ripped off' somewhere and yet no one really seems to care," he writes.
We do care, and decided to do a slightly more extensive price comparison on airport parking. While we were unable to find anywhere quite as cheap as Palma, we struggled almost as hard to find anywhere as expensive as Dublin.
An hour's parking in the short-term car park at Dublin airport costs 3, while a daily charge of 30 applies. In New York's JFK airport, meanwhile, the hourly cost is a little over 2 and the daily charge is 21. In Madrid the daily rate is 11.90, in Milan €17.60, while in Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport, the cost of a day's parking is just €20.
In fact, we could find just one airport in the world where it costs more to park, and that was Heathrow, where the daily rate is an eye-watering 60 and the hourly rate is 5.70, a price which almost makes Dublin seem like a bargain.
Almost.
See Pricewatch with Conor Pope every Monday in The Irish Times. Ripped off? Stunned by good value? E-mail pricewatch@irish-times.ie
