SUMMERWATCH:From slices of bread for 95 cent to teabags worth €1.70, it's the small additions that you need to keep an eye on in restaurants, writes Conor Pope
IT WOULDN'T BE summer without the tourist industry chiefs complaining about the fall-off in visitor numbers. And while in the past few years there has been a distinct whiff of the boy who cried wolf about many of the moans, this year the hoteliers and restaurant owners might be right on the money.
As the euro remains stubbornly strong and the economic downturn really takes hold, all over the world - or at least those parts of the world that can afford to come to Ireland on their holidays - times are undoubtedly getting tougher. Not only can fewer overseas visitors afford to come here, fewer Irish people are willing to spend their money blindly in expensive cafes, pubs and restaurants.
On a rainy Monday in July - was there any other kind? - Diarmuid O'Baoill found himself in Clonakilty, Co Cork, where he and his wife decided to stop for lunch. They went to Ruby G's cafe for a bowl of soup, "and very nice it was too", he says. The couple thought the single slice of bread served with each bowl was, however, not enough to quell their hunger pangs and so they asked for a couple more.
"We proceeded to enjoy our lunch in the company of the usual multi-national gathering of tourists as expected at this time of year," O'Baoill writes.
When the couple got their bill, he was amazed, and less than pleased, to see that the extra slices of bread had cost them 95 cent. Each. He doesn't tell us exactly what class of bread they were given by Ruby G's, but it would want to be very special indeed to warrant a price of nearly €1 a slice. "Combine this penny-pinching attitude with the weather so far this 'summer' and I think it's no surprise that Fáilte Ireland et al are predicting a gloomy tourist season," he concludes.
It's not just in the prime tourist spots that readers are being asked to pay over the odds. Michael Fitzgibbon was also struck by the high price of another everyday item which he thinks should cost a whole lot less.
He popped in to Smyth's on the Ranelagh Road in Dublin recently for a drink with a few friends. "Being the middle of the week, some people were driving, so pints of water with blackcurrant were in order," he says. And how much do you think such a typically Irish non-alcoholic tipple might have cost?
"Initially, I bought a pint of beer with a pint of water with blackcurrant but I didn't get a receipt so I wasn't sure of the breakdown. The two drinks cost me €8 so I assumed the pint of beer must have been €5.50, meaning the water with blackcurrant would have been €2.50 (ridiculously expensive)."
One of his friends subsequently went to the bar and bought a single pint of water with a healthy dash of blackcurrant added and was charged €3.50. "We weren't sure how they had reached that price but what wasn't in doubt was the price of €3.50 for the drink. None of us queried it, we just didn't buy any more of them.
"Things are expensive in Ireland but charging €3.50 for a pint of water with blackcurrant is attacking an institution for me," Fitzgibbon writes. "I've been having pints of water with blackcurrant since I was young; to think that they are now the equivalent price of a cheap beer is nuts."
This mark-up on a pint of water and blackcurrant would appear to be pretty extraordinary, although it's by no means unusual in Irish pubs. If a €3 bottle of blackcurrant cordial makes approximately 50 pints, a pub charging €3.50 per pint will profit to the tune of around €172 from its €3 investment. Of course, many pubs have paid large sums of money for their licences and could not realistically sustain a situation whereby people were sitting around with free drinks in front of them, but a balance should be found - say €1.70 a pint?
And speaking of €1.70, that is how much Michael Redmond was asked to pay recently for an item that probably can't cost more than a cent. Redmond was in a Dunnes Stores Timepiece Café, a place which, he says, gives excellent value for a three-, four- or five-item breakfast fry. The fry includes tea, toast and butter, he writes.
"If you get a small or standard teapot, with one teabag, it is included in the price of the meal. But put a second teabag in the pot and the price of the entire meal rises by €1.70. Is this the dearest teabag in the world?"
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How much for . . . airport parking
Home
Dublin - €40/€9.50
Shannon - €20/€6
Belfast, George Best International - €13.87/ €8.32
Knock, Ireland West - na/€8
And abroad
London, Heathrow - €56.13/€19.42
Amsterdam, Schipol - €26/€5.50
Barcelona - na/€9
Rome, Fiumicino - €18.50/€12
Paris, Charles de Gaulle - €20/€10.70
New York, JFK - €19.37/€9.68
Prices are standard daily rates in short- and long-term car parks respectively