Ireland's gross domestic product rose 1.7% in the third quarter from the second and stood 5% higher than it was a year ago, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said on Friday.
Irish GDP has outperformed everywhere in the EU each year since 2014 and the European Commission expects it to do so again this year with growth of 5.6%, signalling that the economy has brushed off uncertainties arising from Brexit.
Ireland's finance ministry has forecast that the economy could grow as little as 0.7% next year if Britain crashed out of the European Union or 3.1% in an orderly withdrawal, a course it looked set for after Prime Minister Boris Johnson's re-election.
Quarterly GDP growth for the second quarter was revised to -0.1% from an initial estimate of +0.7% with the annual figure amended to 4.9% from 5.8%. That meant GDP was growing at a rate of 5.9% for the first nine months as a whole, the CSO said.
Many economists prefer to use other indicators such as the labour market as the most accurate barometer of how Ireland's export-focussed economy is doing, as the relevance of using GDP diminished when 2015 growth was adjusted up to 26 percent after a massive revision to the stock of capital assets.
Such distortions, related to Ireland's large cluster of multinational companies, prompted the CSO has begun to phase in new measures which strip out some of those globalised activities.
One such data point, modified total domestic demand, rose by 3.6% on the quarter. Ireland's labour market is also close to capacity with unemployment at 4.8%. (Reuters)
Source: www.businessworld.ie
