HALFORDS, the bicycle and car-parts retailer, is charging an average of 28% more in the republic than it does in Northern Ireland.

An analysis of the prices of nearly 3,500 items on the company’s Irish and British websites has found that, after the sterling-euro exchange was accounted for, 98% of products were more expensive here than in the UK.

The analysis was carried out by Professor Barry Smyth, director of Clarity, a centre for sensor-web technologies at University College Dublin. He discovered that some product categories are significantly more expensive in Ireland. For example, Halfords’ bicycle helmets cost almost 50% more than in the UK.

The largest relative price difference between the countries was on a self-adhesive car sticker. On the UK website the item is listed at £0.99 (€1.13). On Halfords.ie, it is €4.49. The biggest price-difference was on an Apollo men’s mountain bicycle — £117.47 (€135) in Britain and ¤224.99 on the Irish website.

Halfords has 22 stores in the republic. The company said last week that the prices on the Irish website for the car sticker and the bike were errors and are being amended.

Smyth, who has conducted surveys on Ikea and Argos prices, said that the differential between the Halfords websites cannot be explained by the lower British Vat rate. “By comparing the product prices before Vat was added, I still found an average price increase of just over 21%,” he said.

“I did notice one interesting feature of Halfords’ pricing structure, at least compared to Ikea and Argos. The relative price difference for big-ticket items tends to be less in Halfords than for cheaper items. However, these price differences increase quickly as we include less-expensive products. In Ikea and Argos, price differences remained relatively stable across the entire range.”

Halfords said it constantly reviews and amends prices to ensure fairness across the countries it operates in. “Prices charged for products in different countries are affected by a number of factors including exchange-rate fluctuations, transport costs, staff pay, taxes and local market conditions.

“Given that we have an inventory of some 10,000 lines, managing the pricing is an ongoing and detailed task and through this process we constantly adjust our prices.”

He added that because bicycle helmets are classified as a safety item in the UK, they are not subject to Vat. This makes them cheaper than helmets available in Ireland.

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