Quarterly Economic Commentary, Autumn 2015

The pace of the Irish recovery would appear to be increasing; the latest National Accounts indicate that output in the economy grew by over 5 per cent in 2014 and by almost 2 per cent in Q2 2015 alone. Use of the nowcasting model (summarised in the Appendix) suggests the economy is growing through Q3 by approximately 1.5 per cent per quarter in 2015. Accordingly, we now update our forecast for GDP in 2015 to 6 per cent, with GNP expected to grow marginally less at 5.9 per cent. One significant consequence of this is that Irish income per capita, which fell significantly post-2007, is now back to the peak level prior to the financial crisis