The economy has "probably stalled" and the "rosy scenario painted by the Minister for Finance in the last Budget now reads like pulp fiction", according to Prof Brendan Walsh of the Smurfit School of Business at UCD.

Addressing business leaders at the Metropolitan Club, New York, Prof Walsh said that as the external situation continued to deteriorate, the short-term outlook for the economy was more sombre than it had been for over a decade. The growth rate is likely to fall from last year's 11 per cent to a mere 3.5 per cent for 2001 as a whole.