Give me a crash course in ... Irish economic growth
CSO data shows the economy is booming again – but how reliable are the figures?
Growing paings: Nobody believes our GDP numbers any more. Photograph: iStock
The Central Statistics Office unleashed a slew of economic data this week. It shows, among other things, that the Irish economy is booming again, and grew by 7.8 per cent last year. This is more than three times the euro zone average and faster even than China.
Employment is also growing more rapidly than we thought – up 3 per cent, or 66,800 last year – and we’re now just 12,000 off the pre-crash peak of 2.23 million employed, which was recorded in late 2007 just before things went belly-up.