Your grocery bill is now costing you €70 a week more than it did last year; all energy bills have been rocketing skyward, despite profits in all sectors year on year.

This business of inflation (the rise in the price of goods and services) is actually quite straight forward; it needs to be kept low.

Up to a year ago a 100% mortgage of say 400k for a new house was the norm in Ireland, one institution was brash enough to tag on an extra 10% to kit the house out. Now you’ll be lucky to get 70% of the loan value, if you’re lucky at all.

That forces first time, young, buyers to have to stump up 30%, or say €100k. So less people than ever can buy, the banks are slowing down the ability to buy houses, and so are actually fuelling the recession.

When I bought my first house in 1990 it was two and a half times salary so repayments were not a huge problem.

We obviously had to take things handy buts it was a far cry from today, where the salary to house price ratio is closer to fifteen to one, clearly impossible for many people to finance a loan.

Unless you are Celia Larkin who can get a load from Fianna Fail, then have Bertie give her a loan to pay it back. At this stage of her life don’t you think that Celia could behave like the rest of us and just take out a bank loan.

What a waste of money?

Did you know that Irish td’s earn twice their UK MP equivalents, Ministers here even more again? In Britain last week there was uproar when it emerge that members of parliament were suggesting a wage increase.