Category: Weekly Round Up

An uncertain outlook for Irish housing completions

The outlook for Irish housing completions is now especially uncertain. Yesterday’s CSO data showed 6,884 completions in Q2 2024, down 5% on the year, a disappointing out-turn. This suggests the early timing of Easter did hurt Q1’s especially weak figures, but the disruption to housing starts in 2022 from elevated energy costs, build cost inflation […]

CSO projects Irish population of 5.6-5.8 million by 2030

This week the CSO published updated population projections for Ireland. Population growth in the range of 0.8%-1.2% per annum is forecast out to 2030, or by 6%-9% cumulatively to 5.6 5.8million. In comparison, the IMF’s projections for the twenty euro area countries’ population is for only 0.2% growth per annum through 2023-2029 to 351 million. […]

Economics Weekly July 12th

This week’s MyHome report showed asking price inflation accelerating to 7.3% in Q2 2024, the fastest pace in two years. Furthermore,  residential transactions in June were being settled at 6% above the original asking price – indicative of intense competition amongst homebuyers. The fresh momentum in Irish house prices is being driven by the resilient […]

Economics Weekly July 5th

This week we published our new forecasts for the Irish economy. We revised down our forecasts for Irish GDP growth to 1.0% in 2024 (from 1.5% in our February Outlook) and to 3.9% in 2025, but reflecting well understood measurement distortions relating to the multinationals. In contrast, most indicators suggest the Irish economy expanded at […]

Ireland is the most expensive country in the Euro Area

Recent data published by Eurostat showed that Ireland’s price level for consumer goods and services had risen to 42% higher than the EU average last year, and was the second most expensive in the entire EU, just behind Denmark (43%) and the highest in the Euro Area. While the most recent data shows that inflation […]

Irish house price inflation accelerates to 7.9% in April

Today’s news the Irish Residential Property Property Price Index (RPPI) rose by 0.4% in April, with the annual inflation rate accelerating to 7.9% confirms the housing market is heating up again. Still, this shouldn’t be a surprise given the lack of housing supply, but also that average earnings rose by 4.7% in the year to […]

Irish household savings rate picks up sharply in early 2024

New CSO data this week showed the Irish household savings ratio rose sharply to 14.7% in Q1 2024. This is one of the highest levels for the household savings ratio on record, only surpassed twice in the past 25 years, during the Covid19 pandemic and briefly in 2009,following the global financial crisis. These were both […]

Taking the temperature of the Irish housing market

MyHome data show homebuyers were paying 4.1% above the original asking price to secure a property in May. In Dublin, the premium over the asking price was 5.4%. This demonstrates housing market conditions in Ireland remain very tight, with robust demand driving intense competition for homes. In contrast, Zoopla reported the average UK residential property […]

ECB won’t be held back by the Federal Reserve

Given an ECB rate cut on June 6th is now seen as a near-certainty, attention will soon turn to how rapidly the ECB can cut rates over the next two years. One view has been the ECB will have limited scope because divergence from the Federal Reserve will place downward pressure on the euro. However, […]

UK CPI inflation data this week could sway market view on rates

Currently market expectations are split on whether the Bank of England will cut rates from 5.25% at the June 20th policy meeting. However, this week’s UK CPI release should show inflation in April falling close to, or even slightly below, the Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC) 2% target. Of course, this will reflect negative contributions from […]