Chart of the week: Ireland’s economic recovery gathers momentum

Ireland's recovery is picking up speed, but it still has a long way to go before it takes off.

699-Irish-GDP

Ireland has suffered a wrenching recession and only narrowly averted national bankruptcy thanks to a bailout from international creditors. But now it finally appears to be turning the corner.

GDP grew by 2.7% in the second quarter of 2014. The annual rate of expansion has now reached 5.1%, a figure typical of pre-crisis days. Meanwhile, unemployment has edged down to a five-year low of 11.6%. Ireland now looks set to trim its budget deficit to 4.8% of GDP this year, down from 7.2% in 2013.

Unfortunately, there isn't much life in the domestic economy, as households are still weighed down by debts that total twice the national income, while mortgages arrears have been on the rise. Instead, growth depends on exports. For now, trade is strong.

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Yet while Ireland's two top trading partners, America and Britain, are growing rapidly, Europe, another key export destination, seems to be slowing. So it looks like there's a long slog to go before the rebound reaches take-off speed.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.