The Central Statistics Office (CSO) disclosed on Thursday that the average weekly expense on domestic heating and electricity for residences in the Republic rose to approximatively €63.11 during 2022 and 2023. This demonstrates an approximately two-thirds increase compared to the period from 2015 to 2016, primarily a result of an abrupt surge in energy costs following events in Ukraine.
The agency’s current household budget study reveals that households with less income expended relatively more of their earnings on basic necessities, particularly energy, than the wealthier households during the investigated period. The findings from this study carried out in 2022 and 2023 influenced amendments the CSO applied to the consumer price inflation reference basket of products earlier this current year.
The survey revealed that the typical weekly expenditure on home energy – encompassing gas, oil and other fuels for heating and cooking; and electricity for lighting – represented 6 per cent of every household’s total weekly outlay, an increase from the 4 per cent in the 2015 to 2016 study.
For the lowest income households, over half their weekly expenditure was consumed by essential costs – being food, accommodation and energy, contrasting with 35.5 per cent for the households in the top earning bracket, as reported by the CSO.
In general, an average weekly outlay of a household in 2022 and 2023 was slightly more than €1,007; up from €837.47 in the preceding study meaning a more than 20 per cent rise. The expenditure on meals rose by 30.5 per cent across the period to an average of €160.93 weekly, it represents 16 per cent of the typical household’s income which is up from 14.7 per cent.
Paul Walsh, representative for Peopl Insurance, underlined that the study emphasises the severe impact the inflation crisis that significantly worsened in early 2022 has inflicted on Irish residences.
While deflation has begun to take effect in recent days, he stated that the effects of the unprecedented inflation witnessed in recent years will continue to be felt in Irish homes for some period. The study discovered that households are doling out an average of €184.56 weekly for housing-related expenses, comprising mortgage repayments and rents. This represents a 12.3% growth from the preceding survey. Despite soaring rents and interest rates during that period, the portion of total expenditure dedicated to housing remarkably dropped from 19.6% in 2015/16 to 18.3% in the latest research.
This can perhaps be explained by the significant surge in the cost of food and energy during that period, combined with other elements such as changes in the household definition used to collect data by the Central Statistics Office (CSO). Previously, for instance, one household would have comprised two people sharing cooking facilities at a single location. However, the CSO now considers roommates or flatmates, who do not share expenses, as separate households.
Additional structural effects – encompassing a rise in the proportion of young adults residing with their parents from the 2016 Census to the 2022 Census – might further contribute to the decrease in housing expenses as a percentage of total household outlay.