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GROCERY PRICE INFLATION is seldom too far from the news these days, with the government facing regular criticism over the spiralling cost of doing the weekly shop.
Most people will have noticed how expensive things have become in recent years, but one figure has repeatedly been held up in the past few weeks to attack the government.
Several opposition TDs have told the Dáil that families are now spending an additional €3,000 per annum on groceries than they were just a couple of years ago.
But where did this figure come from? And is it accurate?
Multiple TDs from Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats and Independent Ireland have claimed that families are spending €3,000 a year more in supermarkets than was the case at the start of the decade.
The claim has been made 18 times in the Dáil since the start of June – though not always consistently.
Some TDs have said that the annual cost of groceries is €3,000 higher for families than it was in 2021; one TD claimed the yearly price of a family shop is €3,000 higher than it was in 2022; others still have claimed it’s €3,000 higher than it was last year.
TDs have also differed in describing who exactly is spending €3,000 more per year on groceries, with everything from the “average family” to the more general term “many families”, to even vaguer terms like “families” and “people” in general.
To help nail down a claim, The Journal asked each of the Social Democrats, Sinn Féin and Independent for the source of the €3,000 figure quoted by their respective TDs.
The three parties all referenced an article by Irish Times consumer affairs journalist Conor Pope from 16 June.
Sinn Féin also cited a motion tabled by Social Democats TD Jennifer Whitmore on 9 July calling for the profits of supermarket owners to be made more transparent
Among other things, Whitmore’s motion called for the Dáil to recognise that “many families are now spending €3,000 more a year on groceries than they were in 2021“.
Given the various inconsistencies around how the €3,000 figure has been used, this is the claim we’ll examine for the purposes of this article.
The Irish Times article referenced by the Social Democrats and Independent Ireland discusses grocery price inflation in the 12 months to the middle of May.
The Social Democrats spokesperson’s response highlighted a specific quote from the piece:
“For a household that spends €200 a week on groceries, a 5% increase [since 2024] is costing them an extra €500 a year,” Pope said.
“But that 5 per cent comes on top of – and not instead of – all the other savage spikes that have been recorded over the past four years That means many families are now down about €3,000 on 2021 on their supermarket spending alone.”
Given that the quote mentions “over the past four years”, it can be taken that TDs who claimed there’s been a €3,000 increase since 2022 or last year are incorrect – the figure refers to 2021.
Now let’s look at how the €3,000 figure was calculated.
The article mentions figures on grocery price inflation carried out by Kantar, an insights company that publishes data on Irish supermarket prices every month.
It says that Kantar reported annual inflation of 4.96% for a 12-week period up to mid-May of this year.
But the €3,000 a year figure is about a family that would have spent €200 a week on groceries in 2021 (the idea being that the same family is now spending €3,000 more now because of inflation than it was four years ago).
Therefore, we need to take that €200 figure back to mid-May 2021, and apply Kantar’s inflation figures for the same point in mid-May 2025 – when the company said grocery price inflation was 4.96%.
That will allow us to roughly see what that same €200 grocery basket would cost four years later – and how much the cost increase is worth over the course of 12 months.
Before we start, it’s important to say that these calculations are based on Kantar’s figures only, which look at inflation as a whole.
The company bases its analyses on representative surveys of 5,000 families and the value of items they have bought over certain 12-week periods.
This is not to question Kantar’s methodology: it’s just a different way of doing things compared with an agency like the CSO, which measures inflation by comparing the prices of a very specific set of products over time.
Now back to those €200 worth of groceries from 2021.
According to Kantar, grocery price inflation over the four years between mid-May 2021 and mid-May 2025 was:
These inflation increases were cumulative – so something that cost €10 in mid-May 2021 would have cost €10.55 twelve months later (when inflation was at 5.5%), and €12.29 in mid-May 2023 (when inflation on that €10.55 was 16.5%).
By 2022, the €200 groceries would cost €211; the following year they would have cost €245.82; and so on up until mid-May 2025, when the cost would have risen to €264.72 - or €64.72 more expensive every week than the equivalent price in 2021.
If we multiply that additional €64.72 per week over the course of 52 weeks, the (hypothetical) family would spend an additional €3,365.44 on the same items compared to 2021.
But does it mean that this is actually happening, or that this is how much is spent by an average family every week?
CSO statistics
As mentioned above, Kantar’s inflation reports are based on surveys involving 5,000 families, but they don’t actually tell us how much those families spent each week.
It’s likely that some of them were paying €200 a week for groceries in 2021, but it’s also possible to gauge what an average family was spending on the supermarket shop at the time.
The CSO’s Household Budget Survey for 2022 to 2023 (the closest period for which data is available), gives a breakdown of families by size and their average weekly spend on ‘food consumed in the home’.
The largest family size in the CSO’s data describes ‘four or more people’ – again, this comes with a caveat that some families are bigger than four people and that four-person families may be bringing down the average spend for the dataset as a whole.
According to the stats, families of four or more people spent an average of €188.76 a week on ‘food consumed in the home’ in 2023. The average figure was even lower for smaller households.
If one uses the CSO’s consumer price index as a guide, one can also see what that spending figure was equal to in May 2021 and in May 2025.
The index says that inflation on ‘Food & Non-Alcoholic Beverages’ was 4.4% from May 2021 to May 2022, 12.6% to May 2023, 0.27% to May 2024 and 0.41% to May 2025.
So if you assume a family was spending €188.76 a week in May 2023, the equivalent spend was €160.57 in May 2021 and €190.05 in May 2025.
If you multiply the difference of €29.48 per week over the course of a year, the annual total is €1,532.96 – around half of the €3,000 figure that’s been mentioned so often.
If you apply Kantar’s inflation rates to the €160.57 figure from mid-May 2021, then the May 2025 figure is equivalent to €212.53 – a difference of €51.96 per week, which is equivalent to €2,701.76 over 12 months.
That’s because Kantar’s rates of inflation are higher than those outlined by the CSO.
Because of this, CSO figures show that a family that spent €200 a week on their shopping in May 2021 would have spent €236.71 per week in May 2025 – a difference of €36.71 per week.
And over the course of 12 months, that €36.71 meant the family would be spending an additional €1,908.92 per year on groceries compared to a family that spent €200 a week in 2021 – around two-thirds of the figure cited by TDs.
The two methods of calculating inflation – Kantar’s and the CSO’s – may have resulted in different figures, but they don’t necessarily contradict each other because they relied on different methodologies.
But official CSO data is useful in explaining the pitfalls of quoting the €200 per week figure without context.
Although many families were no doubt spending €200 on their weekly shop in 2021, they were in the minority.
We’ve seen from CSO figures above that most families’ average spend on groceries every week was €189 or less in 2023, two years after inflation on that theoretical €200 began to come into play.
A small group would have paid more than that, though Census 2022 figures suggest that just one in five families in Ireland are made up of more than four people.
That €200 example given by the Irish Times is useful because it uses a round number to show just how pricey groceries have become in the past few years – and they have no doubt become a lot more expensive.
But the example is just that: it refers to a hypothetical family doing a shop that costs exactly €200 every week, and what that same family would spend on the same things in May 2025.
In reality, the prices of all groceries in a person’s trolley are not subject to the same, uniform increases over a 12-month or four-year period.
As the CSO’s consumer price index shows, things tend to get more expensive (or cheaper) than others at different rates.
What’s more is that no two families will ever buy the exact same things from week to week, even if a lot of the things in a family’s weekly shop will be consistent.
There are other factors too, like families growing or changing their spending habits over time.
A family that paid less than €200 a week in 2021 may end up paying much more now because more children have been born or because they simply have more money to spend.
Other families may have decided to cut down on certain items every week to reduce costs.
The €3,000 figure is nevertheless correct if one is to take a shop that cost €200 in May 2021 and apply Kantar’s methodology to it – and it should be said that some families would have been spending that much and more on their shopping at the time.
Equally, that level of spending was not a universal experience; the majority of people spent less on their weekly shop in 2021 and are not now experiencing the level of extra spending that some TDs claim (even if they are spending a lot more because of inflation).
Holding up the €3,000 figure in such a way is therefore not helpful, because it doesn’t reflect the reality for a lot of people who are still feeling the pinch of increased prices.
Oliver Browne, a lecturer in accounting at University College Cork’s economics department, noted that the CSO methodology using the consumer price index relies on “the average basket of goods, which we do not all experience equally”.
He told The Journal that the €3,000 figure would be at the higher end of shopping inflation experienced by a family of two and two children – but that the average shopper “would not experience this level of inflation”.
“That is the caveat of the reporting around this figure and the use of the term ‘many families’,” he explained.
Browne added that ultimately, there is “no accurate information available” on the average weekly shop by consumers, which he said makes nailing down such a figure “difficult”.
Multiple TDs from Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats and Independent Ireland have claimed in the Dáil that grocery prices have become €3,000 more expensive a year for families than they were in 2021.
The TDs did not say how many families and, in most cases, did not state whether they were referring to an average family or some families in general.
The figure is based on grocery price inflation data by insights company Kantar, which was highlighted in an Irish Times article.
The article gave the example of a hypothetical family who spent €200 a week on their shopping in mid-May 2021, explaining how inflation since then meant such a family would now pay €3,000 more per year on groceries.
This example is correct, but is purely hypothetical.
Data from the Central Statistics Office suggests that most families in Ireland were paying a lot less than €200 a week on groceries in 2021.
Most families are therefore not paying €3,000 more a week on groceries in 2025; and the figure would be at the higher end of expenditure for a weekly shop in Ireland.
However, a small number of families would have been paying more than €200 on their weekly shop in 2021 and will be paying even more now, so the claim is not entirely without merit.
Similarly, other families will have grown in size or increased the budget of their shop, so will also be spending a lot more; conversely, others may have children that are now of college age, or will have decided to cut down on their spending.
Regardless, Ireland has experienced significant grocery price inflation in recent years, so even where families are not paying €3,000 more every year, the price of their weekly shop will still have jumped by a lot.
Beyond the figure of inflation, it is ultimately impossible to pin down a figure for exactly how much more families are spending on groceries now – even though we know that they are because of inflation.
We therefore rate the claim: MIXTURE. As per our verdict guide, this means that there are elements of truth in the claim, but also elements of falsehood. Or, the best available evidence is evenly weighted in support of, and against, the claim.
The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
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