Extra charges for electricity are powering up the price of self-catering accommodation, writes Conor Pope, while some readers find it's much cheaper to shop north of the Border.

A four-bedroom coastal property in the southeast has a weekly rental of €1,800 throughout the month of August. While the house is spacious, it is hardly stunning, so the rent seems steep. But it's not enough for the owners, who are also demanding a €12 daily electricity payment from would-be holiday makers.

While no one is suggesting that the ESB gives its power away for peanuts, most Irish families would struggle to rack up more than €100 in electricity for the eight weeks of July and August, so how the owners can justify an €84 weekly charge during the summer in a holiday home fitted with solar panels is impossible to say.

They are not alone. While she wasn't asked to pay €12 a week, Laura Watters was still pretty peeved when she tried to book a house in west Cork for three weeks this summer and was quoted an inexplicably sizeable sum for her electricity.

"From looking at self-catering prices I knew it wouldn't be cheap," she writes. "As it happens, we were quoted €675 for the last week in June and €850 per week for the following two weeks, which seem to be the standard."

And if it had stopped there, then she would probably have stayed in Ireland for her holiday.

"It was when the letting agent mentioned that there would be a charge of €49 per week for electricity I thought enough was enough. I phoned the office in Cork to query it and ask why they don't read the meters. A guy in the office said that by the time they employed someone to read the meter it wouldn't be worth their while."

She sent the company a stinker of an e-mail and decided to go to Wales instead.

John Colcannon is the director of regional development at Fáilte Ireland and he says the practice of owners of self-catering accommodation

charging over the odds for electricity is not something which has come onto his radar until now, but he admits it is a concern.

"The majority of self-catering holidays are booked by families and we believe there should be no add-ons. Our recommendation is that owners charge an all-in price."

He says that if electricity is to be considered an extra "you should read the meter when you arrive and then again when you leave and only pay for what you use. It is certainly not best practice to be asked to pay a daily rate of €12."

He maintains that despite these shocking charges, self-catering accommodation in Ireland remains good value for money and says that prices range from €500 to €800 per week for family-sized accommodation. "Of course there are exceptions, but generally speaking self-catering accommodation represents excellent value for money."

If self-catering accommodation is good value, there is little else that is, according to an Australian who contacted us last week.

He has been living in Co Louth with his partner for about a year now and got in touch to express his dismay at the cost of living here.

"We both have professional jobs so we're lucky we can afford to live here," he writes. "We find the cost of eating out and alcohol in Ireland quite simply astounding. We've had friends come to visit who have said 'we love Ireland, but we would never, ever come back because of the price of food and drink'."

His wife is partial to the odd rum and coke, while he is fond of a more traditional stout. "The cost of these two drinks peaked at over €12 recently at O'Donoghue's pub in Dublin (it is usually just under €10 for both)," he writes. "We've taken trips to Germany, Italy and Spain in the last year, where you get to see the real value of the euro (as opposed to Ireland), and you come back wondering why this country is so ridiculously expensive."

He says that he has taken to travelling across the Border to do most of their shopping. "The North is just so much cheaper. While it's on the same island, it's truly another country when it comes to prices."

See Pricewatch with Conor Pope every Monday in The Irish Times. Ripped off? Stunned by good value? E-mail: pricewatch@irish-times.ie