The pound dropped six percent overnight.
In case you don’t know what that might mean for you, allow us to explain. One euro will now get you 90p. Just an hour ago it was 89p. It’s entirely plausible that the pound will continue to fall, making British goods and services cheaper and cheaper for Irish people.
Traders aren’t sure what actually sparked the ‘flash crash’ though some believe that harsh comments from French president Francois Hollande on Brexit negotiations might be responsible.
The pound famously fell catastrophically back in June when the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU but had regained some stability in the intermittent months. That appears to have gone out the window, hot on the heels of the Conservative governments announcements that they would be compiling lists of non-nationals and risking their spot in the single free market for the sake of stricter immigration controls.
If we take the Big Mac index, a measure of relative price levels using the price of a Big Mac in two countries, we can see the advantages for Irish people.
A Big Mac in the UK would currently cost £2.69, which is currently equivalent to €2.99. This is 65c cheaper than than a Big Mac in Ireland.
Of course, when you scale the products up, the savings go up as well. An 11-inch Macbook Air from a British Apple store currently costs the £749, the equivalent of €830 which is a full €200 cheaper than the same laptop in Ireland, from the same distributor.
Long story short, if you’re buying anything of significance any time soon, it might be worth the drive up north.
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