DID you notice how ridiculously expensive Easter eggs were this year?
Sure, I spotted a few tiny ones in the supermarkets for a couple of euro, but anything that was larger than bite-sized started at €7 or €8 and worked all the way up to the luxury range of €20 or even €25.
And don’t get me started on the shrinkflation of the bars inside the choccy eggs. Limp, undersized versions of the chunky one I used to gorge on in my childhood.
Scarily, if predictably, it appears that Easter eggs are going to be even more expensive next year.
Heavy rainfall in regions where most of the world’s cocoa is produced, in west Africa, has damaged crops, and the price of it has soared from $4,275 a tonne to more than $8,000. Consumers are being warned they will see this feed through into prices at the tills next Easter.
Fancy an extra Easter egg in 2025? I should cocoa.
In the highly unlikely event you have some left over from last weekend, you might want to check their eat-by date and put them into cold storage for next year!
Of course, we are well used to bad news on price rises by now. It seems everything is going up and up and up, and far quicker than most people’s wages or social security supports.
And yet, remarkably, as we prepare to anoint a new Taoiseach next week, the cost-of-living crisis has not been mentioned as a priority bulging out of Simon Harris’s in-tray.
Early signals from our leader-in-waiting suggest he is trying to recapture lost ground for Fine Gael by targeting businesses and farmers. Mr Harris has also suggested crime and law and order are important issues he wants to address. This week, he even said road safety is his priority.
Look, I appreciate he can have more than one priority, but this is starting to look like a populist pot pourri - confetti at a wedding!
Moreover, I would argue these issues, important as they are, barely register on the list of top concerns among voters, as shown in recent polls. These suggest immigration, housing and health are the most important areas where people want to see action and change.
The elephant in the room, though, as the Easter Egg story testifies, is the cost-of-living crisis.
It is this, I believe, that will be the biggest factor in Mr Harris’s short term as Taoiseach; this that could well collapse his government prematurely and force him and his party into a devastating defeat at the ballot box before he is a wet weekend in the job (believe me, whatever weekend it is, it will be wet!).
The cost-of-living crisis has been around for a few years now, and it appears to be a constant spiral: a constant drain on our resources.
And it affects everyone.
It steals money from our pockets, it makes people feel poorer and less willing to spend, it forces businesses to increase their prices, and compels many of them to close when they cannot keep up.
When prices increase a lot faster than wages, the effect is universal.
Housing is a massive problem for generations of people; but for those who own their own homes, it may barely register as an issue.
The cost-of-living crisis, however, affects both cohorts of people.
Immigration may be a bugbear for people fearing a squeeze on services such as health and housing, but many others can see the benefit in having young labour at hand.
Again, both these cohorts will be affected by the cost of living crisis.
Can Mr Harris, in the short time at his disposal, even make a dent in this issue? Well, he certainly can’t if he cannot even bring himself to acknowledge it as a major problem.
As the fuel price rises this week demonstrated, the government seems to believe the crisis has gone away. It seems beset by complacency on this issue.
Perhaps they feel that awarding a 10.25% pay rise to the public sector assuaged the cost-of-living crisis.
Perhaps TDs, who will receive an €11,000 pay rise over the next two-and-a-half years off the back of that agreement, think we are all shielded from the cost-of-living crisis.
If they really do think that, then they are in for some shocks when they knock on doors looking for votes in the weeks and months ahead.
Rising prices are a regular and bitter bone of contention among everyone - rich and poor, city and rural, young and old.
Cost-of-living crisis? What cost-of- living crisis? That seems to be the Government’s attitude.
On Monday, motorists faced further pain at the pumps, when a rise of 5c for petrol and 4c for diesel came in, as the Government seeks to fully restore excise duty on fuel which was parked two years ago to offset the rising cost-of-living.
Motorists face two further price hikes due to this, in August and October, bringing the total increases to 14c for petrol and 12c for diesel.
See? The Government genuinely think the cost of living was a fleeting crisis that has now dissipated. But, really, it hasn’t gone away at all.
These extra taxes are being imposed despite the Government pocketing €3.8bn last year in tax on fuel - the highest figure in a decade. And they were imposed despite pleas to delay the charges further.
Kevin McPartlan, chief executive of Fuels for Ireland, the representative body for fuel importers, said of these increases: “Between now and January 1 next year, the average price of a litre of petrol - which was €173.9 last week - will rise to €187.43.”
If Simon Harris’s government makes it to the budget in October, it will also have a call to make on whether to keep the winter fuel parachute payments to consumers, which this winter amounted to a very welcome €450 in three tranches.
The mood they’re in, I wouldn’t be surprised if they scrapped his ‘temporary’ measure too - even though electricity and gas prices in Ireland remain among the highest in Europe.
As he prepares to be installed as Taoiseach on Tuesday, Mr Harris has ruled out an early election, but if he thinks the priorities for him really are business, farming, and law and order, he could well be heading to the polls far sooner than he thinks.
If, as seems increasingly clear by the day, Mr Harris’s own Fine Gael party keep jumping ship and don’t seem to have the stomach for a fight, why should his coalition partners prop him up for a moment longer than necessary?
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has consistently said he wanted this government to go to the full term, but I would be very surprised if he wasn’t already war-gaming a scenario in which an election is held in months.
The good news for Mr Harris is that, unlike all his other ‘priorities’, the cost-of-living crisis is one he can actually tackle in his short time in the role; and he can start by rolling back on those fuel price rises.
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