The Central Statistics office (CSO) experimental Irish Services Producer Price Index (SPPI) measures changes in the average prices charged by domestic service producers to other businesses for a selected range of services. The CSO says these individual price indices are aggregated together to create a “service industry” index that is limited in coverage. The indices are still under development and may be subject to methodological improvement. Figures should therefore be treated as provisional and subject to revision. These indices are being published to engage users in the ongoing development of the SPPI methodology.

Services prices in Quarter 1 2010, as measured by the experimental SPPI, were on average 4.0% lower in the year when compared with the same period last year. The most notable changes in the year were: Architecture, Engineering and Technical Testing (-8.9%), Employment and Human Resource Activities (-8.5%), Air Transport (-5.2%), Advertising, Media Representation and Market Research (-5.1%) and Postal and Courier (+2.3%).

Services Prices decreased by 1.8% in the quarter. This compares to an increase of 0.5% recorded in Q4 2009. The most notable quarterly price decreases were in Architecture, Engineering and Technical Testing (-4.5%), Air Transport (-4.2%), Sea and Coastal Transport (-3.9%) and Employment and Human Resource Activities (-3.7%). There was an increase of 3.8% in Postal and Courier Activities.

The main factors contributing to the largest quarterly changes, as identified by respondents were as follows: