With no backstop other than the State, this pall of uncertainty has hung over Ireland since the scale of the problem became evident as the initial tranches of loan losses were uncovered during 2010. Only gradually has the Irish Sovereign been recovering the confidence of the market.
On the price front, import prices have stopped declining due to the uptrend in international commodity prices, especially crude oil prices, until this summer. Under these circumstances, domestic corporate goods prices are more or less flat, which is also partly due to the rise in tobacco tax. Meanwhile, corporate services prices continue a year-on-year decrease of slightly over 1 percent.