In an earlier post I drew attention to the extent to which Ireland’s recent apparent competitive gains reflected the weakness of the euro relative to the dollar and sterling.
Another component of competitiveness is, of course, our rate of inflation relative to that of the Euro area as a whole.
It is therefore of interest to put on record the inflation rates in Ireland and in the Euro area since 1999.
This is facilitated by the European Central Bank’s website, from which monthly data on the rate of inflation as measured by the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) may be readily downloaded.
The following Chart tells the story.

It may be seen that for the first five years of the new monetary union Ireland’s inflation rate was – contrary to expectations – significantly higher than the Euro area average. This resulted in a significant loss of competitiveness relative to the rest of the Euro area.
For the years between 2004 and 2007 our inflation rate behaved as expected in a monetary union and differed little from that of the Euro area average.
During 2009 and 2010 we experienced more deflation than the rest of the Euro area. This helped restore some of the competitiveness we had lost in the early years of membership and the ‘internal devaluation’ was hailed at the time in the belief that it would play a big role in getting the economy moving again.
Since 2010, however, our inflation rate has been climbing back up towards the Euro area average.
It would seem that any further ‘restoration of competitiveness’ will require further weakness of the euro on the foreign exchange markets.