A reader told me recently she'd seen the contents of a Government minister's shopping basket and worried that the poor-quality food in it might be affecting Cabinet decisions. Crisps, biscuits, fizzy drinks and various nibbles overwhelmed a single, speckled banana - and not for the first time. The reader had been watching this minister's shopping habits for quite a while.
If you are what you eat, this minister has the food habits of a reckless toddler. I imagined the minister lurching from sweets to savouries, mulling over the relative merits of Kettle Chips or old-style brands, happily anticipating the hour when this food could be processed by the ministerial palate - but mindless, unfortunately, of the determined constituent intent on sharing such detection work with the rest of the nation.
The problem with this story, like most to do with grocery shopping, is that it's not the kind you eagerly pursue or verify. You're not going to stick a microphone under a minister's nose and courageously ask if a preference for comfort foods started before or after the Government heard about the Ansbacher lists, or whether the speckled banana skin may be lying in wait.
But a sneaky snoop in shopping baskets by on-line consumer detectives Retail Intelligence begs the question about putting so much of one's money where one's mouth is. Grocers' group RGDATA rubbished its comparative survey of costs in St Tropez and Blackrock in a counter-offensive survey of their own.
The bottom line is that Ireland is either a very expensive place to shop, or it's not. This outcome is about as useful as a weatherman sharing the news that the climate in St Tropez is warmer, dryer and slightly more humid than Blackrock Shopping Centre on a typical day. RGDATA seemed to suspect mischief in Retail Intelligence's methods, claiming that they were aimed at "achieving headlines rather than achieving accuracy". But RGDATA's survey has some problems of its own, not least the argument that its vested interest in reaching the conclusions it did doesn't inspire full confidence in the accuracy of its results.
The sublimely sensible Director of Consumer Affairs, Carmel Foley, suggests that we wait for Forfás's official survey of price changes since the euro was introduced before rushing to judgment. But you can't help rushing all the same. Some people suspect that various producers and retail outlets donned their cowboy hats as soon as the euro became current, and that people will be paying for their carpetbagging antics until pigs fly, kingdoms come, and the luckless minister with a passion for crisps campaigns in the 10th next election.
The question is how much we are prepared to pay for the privilege of living in Ireland. Even the least numerate of us know that islands on the edge of Europe will have higher transport and production costs than more populated countries basking in sunlight somewhere central. We don't have to go far to figure why local produce costs less in France than in Ireland, and vice versa.
But we can wonder why Irish-made items can on occasion cost more in Ireland than they do in France - a can of Guinness, according to Retail Intelligence, costs €1.32 in St Tropez compared to a hefty €2.09 in the damper climes of Blackrock. A bottle of fizzy orange in the pub nearby costs almost the same as the can.
Government ministers may have too many crisps stuck between their teeth to ponder the plight of consumers facing a summer in Ireland. They may not wish to revive debate about the Groceries Order, which enables many items to continue to be sold well above cost. And if the debate about hypermarkets is revived in front of Minister Ó Cuív, he will rightly make counter-arguments about how important it is to keep local shops open in the service of small or outlying communities whose populations are generally older or less mobile than people in Blackrock.
Weather apart, there are limits to the amount anyone ought to pay for the privilege of living on an island whose inflation rate overall is running at almost twice the European average. There are limits to what any consumer ought fairly to be expected to spend for a bottle of wine to sip while rain stops play, for the car that drives them between one congested thoroughfare and the next, for the insurance that greases the wheels of various actuarial vehicles.
Embedded in the low-tax platform on which the new Government performs is the political choice to make consumers pay for what electors may balk at: to hide, in other words, large chunks of Exchequer income earned through indirect taxes and offer a form of effective protectionism to producers and retailers who think the privilege of having them serve us justifies the heavier charges they continue to make.
Given the choice between drinking a glass of crisp, chilled wine in St Tropez or in Blackrock, there is no doubt about preference. Given the choice between being sick in France or in Ireland, anyone feeling remotely faint ought to don their berets as soon as they can. Convenience may suit the personal habits of some Government ministers; consumers can't keep paying for the fizzy economics of fast food and a basket of crisps.