Roll up, roll up, roll up. Unemployment is inching towards 6%, inflation is poised scarily just below 5% and some of our shriller economists are predicting zero GNP growth for 2008.

Unfortunately, politicians, consumer groups and, regrettably, large sections of the media want to join in the merriment that comes with pricing tubs of butter in Dublin and Bristol or comparing the cost of beer battered ridge cut chips in Banbridge as opposed to Finglas.

The National Consumer Agency spent a portion of its annual budget last week releasing a survey on the price of goods north and south. Whether it got value for money from its trip to Banbridge can probably be gauged from the opening line of the press release that accompanied the survey: "The National Consumer Agency has found, as expected, evidence of considerable mark-up on branded goods when compared with prices in Northern Ireland.'' As expected?

It would be nice if these so-called surveys occasionally threw up something unexpected. While the side issue of mark-ups on own-brand goods is probably worth at least lingering over, the remainder of the survey highlighted gaps in pricing between the north and the south and served very little useful purpose.

Ann Fitzgerald, chief executive of the National Consumer Agency, might ask her surveyors instead to compare the costs of doing business in the UK with Ireland so we can get a fuller picture of the price differentials. That is a piece of work, for some curious reason, very few interest groups want to commission.

Of course goods in the UK are going to be cheaper, when the four main components of the cost of any retail good manufacturing, labour, transport and taxation are all lower in Britain than in Ireland.

Retail assistants in Ireland are paid on average €9.12 an hour, whereas in the UK they are paid between €6.33 and €7.08 an hour. This is not an argument for reducing Irish wages, but an argument that says paying the higher rate comes at a price.

Transport is the same. British retailers will tell anyone that listens how much lower haulage and trucking charges are in the UK, although interestingly diesel charges here are lower here than in Britain.

Fine Gael, in a rather confusing set of messages, has highlighted the higher costs of doing business here. Transport costs are up 14% in recent years and utility bills have risen by 61%. The figures come from a press statement it sent out earlier this year.

Even take VAT. The standard rate in the UK is 17.5%, while we end up having to pay 21%.

Does the National Consumer Agency, Fine Gael and various self-styled consumer champions expect British retailers to ask their UK customers to soak up the higher costs that arise in Ireland? Surely goods are priced according to local market conditions.

Of course there are genuine scandals in this area. Irish shoppers are not getting the full discounts which should become available because of a stronger euro. An even bigger scandal is that virtually none of the major UK multiples, including Tesco, publish accounts for their Irish operations so their customers (and indeed their shareholders) can see what kind of profit margins they are achieving.

The profit margin on individual goods between the two countries is the key measure, not the overall price of the goods between the two jurisdictions. That might be why the UK retailers are not too concerned about the current debate, because it's unlikely to result in the one thing they fear having to reveal their profit margins for Ireland.