Mother's Day recently landed on a beautiful March weekend that saw some of the hottest temperatures so far this year. Mothers all over Ireland were woken up with breakfast in bed, flowers on the kitchen table and perhaps an afternoon tea, or at least a scone or two.
One woman who took her mother to the recently opened Cashel Palace hotel for some coffee and scones got a different kind of wake-up. Ciara said she was "shocked by the price" of €49.50 for tea/coffee and scones for three people.
Ciara promptly shared her receipt online. It included a rough breakdown of costs, including a 10 per cent gratuity charge. Her accompanying message said it had cost €10 per scone – a claim that turns out to be not technically accurate, but is not untrue either.
Regardless, there was uproar on Twitter.
"These prices make me glad that Tipperary is so far away," said Dixie Elliot. Ross McLoughlin claimed "the boom is back".
“Were the scones made of gold?!!! This is just scandalous,” said Mandy McKeever.
“I ate on garden furniture beside the car park,” Ciara said on Twitter, “and even if I had been served the food on a silver platter in the outdoor hot tub €10 is too much for a scone … It’s €5 for a coffee, €10 for a scone. The justification I was given was that the scones are made with locally sourced ingredients.”
Ciara didn’t know the price before ordering, as tea and scones were not on a menu in the outside seating area.
When The Irish Times contacted the hotel, it said the €10 covered not one scone but three small ones, served with jam, butter and cream.
Ciara has since clarified that her party “ordered one scone each and were surprised to receive three tiny scones, which a manager informed me were equivalent to a ‘normal scone’. They don’t notify you when you order a scone that it will come in three little parts. When the price was queried, I was then told that it was good value because of all the scones we got.”
The hotel now says it has since reconfigured its receipts to clearly show the breakdown of cost: “Three homemade scones with Crossogue Jams and clotted cream” will set you back €10.
“Charging these prices is outrageous and in fact has a very serious impact on the economy because people are being overcharged,” says Michael Kilcoyne, chairman of the Consumers’ Association of Ireland. “[The hotel industry is] causing serious problems to the country because when people all over the world hear about these prices that are being charged, they won’t come to Ireland. Why should they?
“This industry told me of the difficulties they were in [during the pandemic]. Their VAT rate was reduced to 9 per cent on food. Some of them received subsidies from the State for staff and all of the rest. The answer in that industry seems to be: charge as high as we can get.
“Everybody everywhere is tight enough for money and the hotel industry ... needs to be called out.”
Cashel Palace, which opened just four weeks ago, offers afternoon tea from €50 which includes tea, sandwiches, scones, cakes and buns. Do people find the prices too high? "Apart from 'Sconegate' it's been going really well thankfully," says Karen Fleming, director of sales at the new hotel.
“We’ve had lovely support from the locals, lovely support from the Irish market, lots of bookings coming in for the summer; so we’re happy we’re providing employment and we are busy – so that is a good complaint.”
Whether three small scones, or one large one, is worth €10 is really a matter of consumer choice. For comparison, the famously expensive Caffe Florian in Venice charges €14.50 for two “English scones” with cream and jam. A cappuccino or Americano there will cost more than €10.
So we’re not quite at the level of some of the highest prices in Europe, but we appear to be catching up fast.
Have you been charged a price you think is too high? Tell us about it using the form in this article, and upload photo of the receipt if you have it.
This article was edited at 12.37 on March 29th
