Domestic economy sees modest growth of 0.6% in Q1 – CSO

The domestic economy expanded by a modest 0.6% in the first three months of this year compared to the last quarter of 2025, the Central Statistics Office said today.

This was driven by increased personal consumption which rose by 0.6% and a rise in Government expenditure of 0.5%.

There was also a drop in investment of 0.8% during the quarter and a rise of 4.2% in imports.

After exports surged in 2025 when multinationals sold products to the US ahead of the introduction of tariffs by the Trump administration, today’s figures showed a significant 7% fall in exports in the first quarter of 2026.

That led to Gross Domestic Product, a measure of the economy which includes the impact from multinationals, to contract by 12.1% in the first three months of this year.

Today’s CSO figures also show a small fall in wages of 3.1% as the number of hours worked fell in the first three months of the year.

Commenting on today’s CSO figures, Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris said that despite ongoing external headwinds, the figures show the domestic economy continued to grow robustly in the first quarter with Modified Domestic Demand expanding by 4¼ per cent on an annual basis.

“Encouragingly, growth was broad based with strong contributions from consumer spending and, in particular, from investment,” Mr Harris said.

“Investment was up over 9% on an annual basis driven by strong activity in the residential sector, as well as a significant expansion in investment in the multinational sector,” he noted.

The Minister for Finance said that while today’s figures show a large annual contraction of 17% in GDP, this reflects a return to more normal levels of exports in the first quarter of this year.

“Indeed, the exceptional level of exports seen in the same quarter of last year was driven, in part, by the front-loading of pharmaceutical exports to the US in anticipation of tariffs,” he said.

He said the Department of Finance expects this effect to moderate over the coming quarters, with GDP projected to return to growth over the remainder of the year.

“All-in-all, today’s figures point to continued resilience in the domestic economy.” the Minister said.

“This cannot, however, give rise to complacency, in particular, given the continued disruption to energy supplies from the Middle East. Indeed, earlier this week, the OECD published a stark reminder that a prolonged period of disruption to commodity flows in the Gulf would dampen global growth further,” he said.