asked the Taoiseach if he is aware that a survey carried out by a team of newspaper reporters in Dublin, Belfast and London on the 28th August, 1964, revealed that essential foodstuffs in Dublin are about eighteen per cent dearer than in Belfast and thirteen per cent dearer than in London; and if he will make a statement explaining the reasons for such differential.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Food Prices Survey.
8.
I have seen the newspaper report referred to by the Deputy and I am satisfied that neither the prices quoted nor the calculations based on them give a fair representation of the position in regard to the relative prices of foodstuffs in the cities in question.
Comparing the price levels of different countries is an extremely difficult operation, involving very exact specifications of the items priced so as to ensure their strict comparability in the different centres. Furthermore, since there is normally quite a considerable variability in the retail prices of any particular commodity in different retail outlets even in a single city, it is essential when comparing price levels in different places to ensure that the prices used are obtained from a wide and representative sample of shops in each place, so that the averages obtained may be fully representative of the average prices paid by consumers. There is no evidence that either of these conditions was fulfilled in the collection of the figures referred to by the Deputy.
Only one reasonably adequate inquiry into relative prices in Dublin and Belfast appears to have been made. This was carried out in August, 1954 and the results published in a paper by Carter and Robson in the 1954-55 Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland. The inquiry showed that, at the time, food prices in Belfast were 2.5 per cent higher than in Dublin. If one can apply to these data the changes in food prices as shown by the Consumer Price Index for Ireland and the Retail Price Index for Britain, in the interval August, 1954 to August, 1964, this would indicate that at the latter date, Belfast food prices were on average about 1 per cent higher than in Dublin.
As regards comparison of food prices with those in Britain, no adequately controlled inquiry has been made. However, that country does supply to the International Labour Office the average retail prices of selected consumer goods in seven towns. Taking such prices in respect of food items at August, 1964, together with the national average retail prices of similarly described items as returned at the mid-August Consumer Price Index inquiry in Ireland, and weighting the two series of prices by the appropriate Consumer Price Index weights, it would appear that the average prices of such items in Ireland were 1 per cent above those prevailing in the seven British towns at that time, though the comparison depends on the assumption that similarly described items were in fact identical commodities.
While undue weight should not be attached to either of these calculations, they indicate that differences in average prices of foods of the order mentioned in the newspaper report do not prevail.