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Economic growth averaged 5.2% every year between 2013 and 2018 – CSO

Growth in the Irish economy averaged 5.2% per annum from 2013 to 2018, according to an analysis of new CSO data.

In a Special Article for the ESRI, Professor John Fitzgerald describes a measure, called Net National Product, as the best picture of the “economic welfare of those living in Ireland”.

For years, the traditional measure of economic growth, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has given a distorted picture of what is going on in the Irish economy.

In 2015, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman referred to the reported 25% jump in Ireland’s GDP that year as “leprechaun economics”.

The average 5.2% rate compares to an average rate of 10.5% when measured by GDP.

The CSO has made attempts to account for the impact of the tax treatment of intellectual property by multinationals as well as other activities such as aircraft leasing.

Professor Fitzgerald’s analysis on Net National Product also shows the foreign-owned sector accounted for a fifth of that growth and just over a quarter of the national wage bill.

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