Author: Patrick Mullane

Irish mortgage market grows to €14.5bn in 2025

This morning’s Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) data show Ireland’s mortgage market grew to €14.5bn in 2025, up 15% on the year, split between €12.3bn of loans for house purchase and €2.2bn of top-up/re-mortgaging activity. The expansion was driven by house price inflation, the average mortgage loan up 7% to €332,000 in 2025. Also, […]

Ireland Infographic – January 2026

We expect GDP will expand by 11.2% in 2025, 2.8% this year and by 3.5% in 2027. View the Ireland Infographic Here: Bank of Ireland Ireland Infographic January 2026

Ireland Outlook – January 2026

New Irish Economic Forecasts We have revised up slightly our forecast for Irish GDP growth to 11.2% in 2025, slowing to 2.8% in 2026. This reflects the surge in exports that occurred last year, which we believe mainly reflected new pharmaceutical facilities coming online. However, a key risk is that exports fall back as ‘front-running’ […]

Dollar under pressure

Unpredictable US foreign and trade policy has seen the dollar come under pressure last week. The greenback has declined from under $1.16 a week ago to around $1.1850 to the euro at the start of this week. President Trump’s threats of tariffs over Greenland and then seemingly U-turn on this at Davos last week has […]

Bank of Ireland Card Spending up 5.7% in December

The latest Bank of Ireland credit/debit card data show spending was up 5.7% in December, still ahead of CPI inflation at 3.2% (November), indicating real price adjusted spending growth by Irish households. The 2025 Christmas season had consumers out in force with spending in all the main categories up on December of 2024. Spending in […]

High frequency data points to growth in Q4

Last week’s Q3 national accounts showed the robust position the Irish economy is in. The surge in GDP driven by exports in Q1 2025 did not fall back over the following two quarters, as many had expected, and this left GDP growth averaging 16% in the first three quarters of the year. Moreover, the domestic […]

Irish GDP continues to outperform

Irish GDP fell by just 0.3% in Q3 2025, leaving the annual increase at 10.8%. GDP surged in Q12025, driven by front running of tariffs and new pharmaceutical production facilities coming online, and it had been expected that GDP would fall back somewhat over the rest of 2025. However, multinational sector output and exports have […]

Dollar edging down

The euro advanced against the dollar last week and is back around $1.16, up about 1c from $1.15 at the start of last week. Helping the single currency is speculation that a peace deal for the Ukraine and Russia might be inching closer and not helping the dollar is news from President Trump that he […]

Quiet day on Thanksgiving

With US markets closed for Thanksgiving, markets took a breather and it was a quiet day overall. There was little data or news to move the needle for the major currencies. The euro was little changed – touching off $1.16 at times briefly – and remains at around $1.1580 currently. Similarly, the euro is little […]

Muted market reaction as UK budget puts off difficult decisions

There was some market volatility yesterday as the details of the UK budget were leaked early. This initially put sterling under a little pressure but, in the end, sterling actually gained somewhat once the full budget was revealed. Sterling is now trading at about 87.5p to the euro and above $1.32 against the dollar. The […]