The Cost of a Healthy Food Basket in Ireland 2014 - 2024

Project start date: 1 January 2014
Project status: Completed
Project type: Nutrition
Discipline: Food poverty
Author/s: Minimum Essential Standards of Living Research Centre at St. Vincent de Paul

Research objective

To estimate the cost of a Minimum Essential Standard of Living (MESL) Healthy Food Basket for 6 household types in Ireland in 2024, and to present these costs as a percentage of take-home income for both social welfare–dependent and minimum-wage households. It also examined the effect of rising food prices, the distribution of costs across food categories, and the additional burden of feeding older children.

Outputs

Research report

Title: The cost of a healthy food basket in Ireland in 2024
Date: 30 September 2025
Summary: Food costs in Ireland rose sharply in 2024, with low-income households spending up to a third of their income to afford a minimum healthy diet.
Findings:
- The cost of a minimum healthy food basket represents a larger proportion of household income from social welfare, as compared to household income from minimum wage employment. Households reliant on social welfare spend a larger percentage of their household income on food compared to households with an employed adult.
- The cost of the food basket depends on household composition. Food costs rise as children grow older, so food is a significant cost for households with an older child.
- The cost of feeding a teenager is more than double the cost of feeding a pre-school child.
- Households that include a teenager and rely on social welfare would need to spend 33% of their income to meet the cost of an MESL healthy food basket. Households that have younger children and rely on social welfare would need to spend 27% of their income to meet the cost of an MESL healthy food basket. When the household has an adult in minimum wage employment, this proportion improves to 27% and 15% of income, respectively.
- Low-income families may sacrifice a healthy diet, given other competing budget demands.
- This research highlights the challenge of trying to balance the cost of a healthy food basket against the cost of meeting other needs and expenses on a low income.
- Spending on social eating (providing for visitors, an occasional takeaway or visit to a café, and extra for Christmas) is an important part of the food basket. This reflects the social and cultural aspects of food. It aims to ensure that the minimum standard still enables households to take part in activities that are a normal part of everyday life.
Recommendations:
1. Maintain regular repricing of the MESL basket to accurately reflect lived costs and ensure social inclusion needs are captured.
2. Policy interventions should address the affordability gap for households living on a budget, especially those with teenagers, to prevent food poverty.
You can download the report of this study below.

The reports of basket studies from previous years are also available below.