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New preliminary figures from the Central Statistics Office show that the country’s GDP is estimated to have fallen by 0.7% in the fourth quarter of 2023 when compared with the third quarter of last year. The CSO said the fall came on the back of decreases in the multinational dominated sectors of Industry and Information…

Around 1.3 million social welfare recipients will receive a double payment this week. Up to €342m will be paid out to pensioners, carers, people with disabilities, lone parents and low-income families. Those on Jobseekers Allowance for over 12 months will also qualify for the enhanced payment. Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys said: “Over the…

Falling energy prices and announcements of grocery price cuts have boosted consumer sentiment at the beginning of 2024, according to the latest Credit Union Consumer Sentiment Index. The survey of 1,000 adults conducted from the 4-19 January puts Irish consumer confidence at its highest level in almost two years. It found that though the Christmas…

Overall mortgage drawdown volumes declined in 2023, new figures from Banking and Payments Federation Ireland show, but the reduction was driven largely by a falloff in switching and remortgaging activity. Mortgage holders moved to switch providers or mortgage products in record numbers towards the latter part of 2022 as the European Central Bank started to…

Global growth is set to stay resilient this year and only pick up pace a bit in 2025, according to a Reuters poll of economists, a stable outlook at odds with still-relatively aggressive interest rate cut bets in financial markets. Growth among leading economies is not forecast to be consistent, with relative strength in the…

A total of 32,695 new homes were completed last year, up 10% on a year earlier, new data from the Central Statistics Office shows. It follows the completion of 10,289 dwellings in the final three months of the year, an increase of 13% on the same quarter in 2022. The completion rate for 2023 exceeds…

Property price growth picked up on an annual basis for the third successive month in November, increasing by 2.9% after prices rose by 0.8% on a monthly basis, new Central Statistics Office figures show today. Annual price growth had cooled from a recent peak of 15.1% in February 2022 to a near three-year low of…

Up to 29,000 housing units are being held up in the planning process or in judicial reviews, a new report from construction consultancy Mitchell McDermott has found. That amounts to almost a full year of housing output at current levels of delivery. The report calculates that 20,683 residential units are being delayed by up to…

The ECB’s Governing Council will meet in Frankfurt today to consider whether to make any changes to interest rates. No adjustments are expected though, despite some progress being made in bringing the inflation rate down across Europe. The rate at which prices are rising in the eurozone had been coming down for months, but reaccelerated…

The Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment will discuss the regulatory and legislative changes required for the transposition of an EU directive on minimum wages. The Directive on Adequate Minimum Wages seeks to reduce working poverty and inequality by improving the adequacy of statutory minimum wages as well as the promotion of collective bargaining.…