Aidan Regan: A tale of one city and a two-tier economy operating beneath it

If you exclude Luxembourg, Dublin is ranked as the most expensive city in the EU to live in but scores poorly for quality of life, especially if you are in the bottom 70 per cent of earners, rent and have children

The Poolbeg incinerator: typically, cities with the highest cost of living also have the highest local purchasing power, but this is not the case with Dublin. Picture: RollingNews

There is no official or internationally-agreed concept on how to measure the cost of living. This means that there is no official cost of living index in the European Union.

Measuring Ireland’s cost of living is really difficult because it has to account for variance in the two biggest costs facing households – childcare and housing. This differs hugely depending on your age and where you live. But, most importantly, it varies massively depending on ...