Card spending in May up 6.5% on the year
This morning’s Bank of Ireland credit/debit card data shows consumer spending still growing at a robust 6.5% pace in May, to €3.9bn, still well above the 2% rate of CPI inflation and exhibiting no signs of faltering due to uncertainty related to US President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements. There was broad based growth across retail (3.6%), services (3.7%) and social(6.4%) spending, with no evidence of any marked decline in expenditure on ‘big-ticket’ items such as furniture, electrical goods, airline fares or holidays. This isn’t surprising. The recent softening of Irish measures of consumer confidence was concentrated in questions on the broad economic outlook, but households’ own plans for major purchases were more resilient. The message is that Irish consumers are understandably nervous about global trade tensions but not sufficiently so to alter their actual key spending decisions.
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