“The annual rate of inflation rose again to 5.1 per cent in March - up 0.3 per cent from February’s figure. This compares to an increase of 0.4 per cent during March last year.”
[*Full story * (https://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/0412/breaking36.htm)
yikes! Might we start getting warnings from the EU to get this into line?
Here comes the Price/Wage Spiral
rte.ie/news/2007/0627/partnership.html
It is simply beyond me that these buffoons can be so reckless - I refuse to believe that they are so economically illiterate as to think that the answer to inflation is to put more money into the pockets of the consumer. They should be allowing the ECB to go about their business, instead of trying to undo it at every turn, and all for the sake of the bloody property market! 
Exactly I don’t get it, do they not realise that at some point something will have to break.
Any idea what the HICP figure was?
From CSO website it seems to be 2.8% yoy and an annualised increase of 3.6% in May.
Did the minimum wage go up again this week? I’m sure I heard an ad about it today on the radio.
EDIT:
Actually, its from next week -
“The Irish hourly Minimum Wage rose to €8.30 per hour with effect from 1 January 2007 and will rise to €8.65 with effect from 1 July, 2007. The 12-month rise will amount to 13%.”
Yep it did, minimum wage up 50%-ish since it’s inception in 2000.
Thats a timely reminder. I must adjust my payroll accordingly! The only time I ever benefited from teh min wage was when I worked in BK aged 17 (and me a vegetarian! Well it wasn’t until then did I stop eating chicken…) what was it now, oh €2.65 an hour, I only worked the midnight shift to get the double pay.
When was it 2.65, when it was introduced it was £4.
.
1997, €2.65.
I don’t remember clearly if it was called the minimum wage but I thought it was at the time, it jsut happened to be puny. I thought it was more the case that the government raised the Minimum Wage quite dramatically.
There was no minimum wage back then…
M3 supply is still shooting ahead, 3 month average is running at 10.4% on the European level…
And German unemployment hitting new lows. I can’t see how any can reasonably forecast where the top will be for interest rates.
Wusses, we’re powering ahead with M3 growing at 33.7% 
Clearly ireland has its own rules of economics…
Somewhat akin to the laws of thermodynamics!!! 
3-month average is now up to 10.7%.
rte.ie/business/2007/0628/ecb.html
I agree with ARW - I wouldn’t bet the house on this series of rate hikes topping out at 4.75%.
When are we actually gonna see these M3 figures declining? If a 4% rate hasn’t even put a stop to them yet, surely 6% is quite a likely possibility to actually put them in reverse and get them heading back down to 4.5%?
Either that, or a credit blow-out in the US!
a whopping 3% of the Irish workforce are on the minimum wage.
So the wages of that 3% is going to go up by 13%.
What’s 13% of 3%?
zero point three nine
Somehow, I think Ireland might just survive that.
Martha who makes the sandwiches gets a 13% pay rise, so Joe who works behind the butchers counter is now only earning 10% more than her so he demands a pay rise to reflect Martha’s better conditions, now Sandra the assistant manager is pissed off that she’s not earning as much more than Joe than she was etc. etc… etc…
How many people work above the old minimum wage but below the new minimum wage? As they will be jacked up as well.
Very, very few, I reckon.
Assume that 3% of the populace are in that situation. Applying the same calculation as below, it’s still a pathetic 0.78 at an absolute maximum.
Not even a blip on the economic radar.