John FitzGerald: Still fumbling in the dark on growth data
Irish economy: Figure which seems ‘just right’ would be growth of just over 5%
There is no agreed headline growth figure for Ireland for 2016 because we are not yet able to disentangle all the complex multinational relationships affecting the economy in that year
Traditionally the publication of the CSO’s national accounts provided a useful benchmark of progress, or lack of progress, in the Irish economy. However, last year’s unbelievable and exceptional headline growth of 27 per cent, memorably captured in Krugman’s phrase “leprechaun economics”, didn’t mean that Ireland had discovered the elixir of eternal growth. Rather, it highlighted a problem with how the new international standards for national accounts portray an economy like Ireland’s with such a scale of multinational activity.