Ground Floor: I've been asked a number of times about the Spanish/Irish shopping basket which I've done for the past two years. I didn't bother with it in July this year because The Irish Times was already doing lots of price checks and comparisons through the summer, but I thought I'd revisit it now to see how things were coming along.

To recap: the whole thing came about when I made a very quick trip to the local supermarket in Spain and filled my shopping basket with a fairly eclectic mix of goods. It was a genuine shopping trip so it wasn't especially representative of a wide product range; it was just what I bought on that particular day. When I got home to Ireland, I bought exactly the same things in my local supermarket and compared the shopping bills. The rules were fairly basic - I bought the same brand of goods where that was possible, I didn't buy either supermarkets' own brand labels, and where it was impossible to make the exact same purchase I chose the mid-price product in Spain and the cheapest possible product at home.

In October 2002, the bill came to €23.52 in Spain (it wasn't a big shopping expedition obviously) and a somewhat steeper €35.35 in Dublin.

In July 2003, on my next trip to Spain, the same goods cost €23.01 and in Dublin €38.78. The main reason for the difference was that salmon and pistachio nuts had fallen dramatically in price in Spain, offsetting hikes in other goods.

Since 2003, inflation in both Spain and the Republic has gone down. A year ago, the Irish CPI [consumer price index\] was at 4.4 per cent while Spain was reporting 4.0 per cent. Now Irish CPI is at 2.6 per cent while in Spain it's 3.3 per cent. And I'm happy to report that the differential is reflected in the shopping basket - the increase in the Irish basket is less than that of our euro-zone friends in Spain.

There were 13 items in the basket and in Spain, only two of those were either the same or lower in price than in October 2003. These were the 250g bags of pistachio nuts - which had gone down from €2.16 to €2.05 - and filtered coffee, down from €1.50 to €1.14. The biggest hike in price was for the 9v battery, which leaped from €1.67 to €4.75.

Those of you with very long memories might recall that the battery has been a bit of a rogue item in the Spanish basket. The first one I bought was a mere 60 cent, which was laughably cheap. I was certain that the price was incorrect but I was assured that it was right. On the next visit it had rocketed in price to €1.67, which was still incredibly cheap. But on this trip it was much closer to the Irish price, at €4.75 compared with €4.99 here.

In fact, it's not just in Spain that the battery cost is strange - in July 2003 the Irish price had gone up from €2.83 to €5.03.

So it was a dramatic increase in Ireland, then, even though now it has actually gone down in price a little since.

There are a lot more items in the Irish basket that are the same or cheaper in price since July 2003. The price of cheddar cheese is almost the same, €2.15 for 200g today compared with €2.16 then; Actimel is 42 cent per unit, a fall of 8 cent; Sanex deodorant is unchanged at €3.29; the Old El Paso Burrito Kit is unchanged at €4.05 and filter coffee is now €2.99 instead of €3.54.

I wondered last time, and I still wonder, why salmon is so much more expensive here. The cost of 300g there was €2.04, whereas here it's €4.17 and yet, culturally, the Republic is identified much more with salmon than Spain.

Anyway, as far as the weekly shop goes, we've narrowed the gap, which has to be some sort of good news.

You might remember, however, that I also wrote about the costs of prescription drugs in Spain, pointing out that they were significantly cheaper there than here. Very recently I read an article which talked about a black market going on in asthma inhalers - apparently people going to Spain are bringing them back for family and friends because of the difference in price.

Following my article on drug price differences, I was contacted by the Irish Pharmaceutical Union. It pointed out that the net costs of drugs here was cheaper when you took tax relief and the drugs refund scheme on board - although that misses the point somewhat. Why should the gross cost of medicine be higher in the first place; and what if you don't spend enough to avail of the refund scheme?

So I decided to check out the cost of over-the-counter medicine instead. Forty generic ibuprofen tablets cost €3.83 in Spain, a unit cost of just under 10 cent. I tried to buy generic ibuprofen here but, having called into four different pharmacies, none of them had anything but branded products available. So I bought some Nurofen. They cost €4.60 for 12, a unit cost of 38 cent.

None of the pharmacies could tell me why generic ibuprofen wasn't available. And so, branded being more expensive, I paid 280 per cent more than in Spain - enough to give anyone a headache.

There's definitely an improvement on the home front but not enough. The price of processed food isn't very different but fresh produce, such as salmon and cheese, is. And, regardless of gross and net costs, drugs are more expensive here, with a bias towards branded products, which hike prices even more.

Check out the full basket on www.sheilaoflanagan.net