Mr. Shane Enright:

The first slide shows our last set of forecasts which dates from the end of April, which was the last formal articulation of the Government's fiscal strategy. It also shows a set of macro forecasts which we call the stability programme update, commonly abbreviated to SPU. In the SPU we forecasted GDP growth of 1.3% this year based on a stabilisation in domestic demand and an increase in exports. Since then we have had a number of observations and hard economic data from the CSO which gave us cause to change a little the view we had of the economy for 2013. The first column on the left is the provisional outturn for 2012 released by the CSO in March. The next column is the actual outturn as estimated in June. The CSO revised down the total level of activity or growth in 2012. This brings us to 2012 with less momentum than we thought we had. We also had data for Q1 and Q2 of this year, and it is fair to say these numbers came in a little below expectations not least the contraction in exports we have seen in the first half of the year. It was negative in the first quarter and positive in the second. This has led us to change our assessment of growth prospects for this year.

Obviously, that means pushing into next year as well, which we will touch on in a little while when we get to the outlook. I will pass over to my colleague, Ms Mary Dalton, who will talk about developments in the international economy in the intervening period.