Áilín Quinlan: I’ve heard of shrinkflation, but these treats take the biscuit...

Ah, now! What’s happened here, then?

I’d just made two mugs of tea and gone to the cupboard for the packet of biscuits we’d bought in such a rush of affection and nostalgia.

Fondly recalling childhood memories of peeling off the plump coconut/mallow cushion with our tongues before crunching down into the firm biscuit base, I opened the packet.

And gasped.

The ‘Someone You Love Would Love Some, Mum’ biscuits! The treats in the iconic ad with Maureen Potter and her three puppets!

A staple of 1970s birthday parties and all family gatherings, the Jacobs mallow biscuits were not matched.

This was an iconic Irish company; not only did it make Coconut Creams and have Maureen Potter in its ads, it succeeded in getting an entire nation to obsess over how the figs got into the fig rolls.

But now?!

I lifted out, with dismay, some flattish little coconut-flecked marshmallow cushions on thin discs of biscuit.

My husband arrived in from the shed for his four o’clock tea.

“God almighty, the mallows are gone very small!” he declared.

So I wasn’t imagining it, then?

We stared at the packet.

These mallows had been bought as a once-off celebration, in fond reminiscence of long-ago childhood treats. They were supposed to be a reward for the effort involved in reducing our waistlines.

Ah, the disappointment.

Whether it was simply down to rose-tinted memories of long-gone childhoods when everything just seemed so much better and bigger and more generous than today, or whether today’s mallows, like so many other products you buy now, are just not the same? We couldn’t be sure.

We disconsolately ate a few, and thought, why does nothing seem the same anymore?

Not long afterwards, a group of us met up and discussed this world and everything in it. Were things really all that better when we were young? It was impossible to be certain.

Forget the posh biscuits of long-ago childhoods for a minute though - what about the escalating price of basic food (which is now apparently rising at a rate of 4%, more than twice the rate of inflation)?

Butter is up by more than a euro a pound on what it used to be 18 months or two years ago, someone complained.

The price of meat, fish, cheddar cheese, eggs and milk have all risen very noticeably in the last 12 to 18 months, we agreed.

I mentioned the small tray of mushrooms I used to buy now and again for 99 cents when I ran short.

In a matter of a few short months that tray shot up to €1.39.

The price of new potatoes, everyone agreed, was eye-watering.

“A woman in front of me at the cash register nearly dropped with the shock of it when she was charged €12 for a very small bag of new potatoes and some milk,” someone reported.

“She queried it and the shop assistant told her the potatoes were €10.”

Someone recalled the gobsmacked expressions on the faces of some tourists who were either German or Austrian.

They were just ahead of her at the cash register when they heard the price of their few bags of groceries.

Their shopping, our friend said – as she could recall from what she saw on the assembly line ahead of her own groceries - had contained mostly vegetables, a few bags of apples, and a pack or two of beer.

Someone else reminded us of Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald’s comment that many Irish households were now paying €3,000 a year more in the supermarket than they were in 2021.

Then the discussion turned to the plastic Adirondack-style deckchairs.

You will remember how these cheap and cheerful chairs, which came in a wide range of colours, were all the go a few years back.

Initially, half the country was purchasing them for around €10 a pop.

Next, the price of the chairs jumped to about €15.

This summer they were spotted on sale for €22 each.

Phew, we said. More than double the price in a few years?

Then a friend left us all gobsmacked. Those exact same chairs, she declared, were currently “on offer” in a shop in her town.

Two for €60.

Everyone groaned.

Someone reported how the cost of one night in a hotel in Dublin had worked out the same as several nights in their accommodation in Spain. Or was it Greece?

Ah, it didn’t matter. The point was that the cost of nearly everything in Ireland is exorbitant.

What is going on?

There was that question asked by the Social Democrats’ deputy leader Cian O’Callaghan. Why, he wanted to know, were supermarkets in this country still not required to be fully transparent and open about their profits?

Last weekend, the government ruled out a new cost-of-living package for households struggling to meet escalating grocery bills and high energy costs, citing global economic uncertainty.

Fair enough, given the scares over new tariffs and trade regulations.

But can’t anything be done about pinpointing exactly why we’re all paying so much for basic foods, and why the price keeps rising?

What’s driving it? Can anything be done about it?

Why can’t the government go off and investigate that, and tackle it?

Inflation here soared up to nearly 10% after the covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and remained well above the ECB target of 2%, in part because of unsustainably high food prices.

Prices need to come down.

Insisting on full transparency of supermarket profits, and then analysing what is actually happening when it comes to costing, might point the way to solutions.

Fair enough if the State feels it’s not in a position to keep doling out cost-of-living supports - nobody could expect that to go on forever - but surely be to God and all his angels, it could start doing something to really tackle the cost of living.