Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 8 October 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform

Macroeconomic Forecasting: Discussion with Department of Finance

7:10 pm

Mr. John McCarthy:

The figure is 0.2%, which is a decline of 1.1% on the projected figure at the time of the SPU, which was 1.3%. The main reason for the downward revision is that we had poor first quarter figures from the CSO, and because we had poor international figures, exports were affected. In addition, the pharma patent cliff issue has intensified. We did not have information at the time of the SPU about the scale of the decline in industrial production, so it is a large downward revision. At the time of the SPU we were close to the consensus - what the troika was saying and, as I mentioned, the market consensus.