Impressive growth figures - Sacrifices beginning to pay off

Yesterday’s Central Statistics Office figures show that the economy is growing at its fastest rate in seven years. This would have been unimaginable even a year ago.

Three years ago anyone brave enough to predict these figures — 7.7% in GDP terms, 9% in GNP terms in the year to the end of June — would have been dismissed as a fantasist. Had someone, as a leading firm of stockbrokers did yesterday, suggest three years ago that growth of at least 4% was likely for the full year and that a rate of 5% cannot be ruled out, they would have offered a cup of tea and a comfortable seat in a quiet, shaded corner to enjoy what was left of their dotage.

The latest Quarterly National Accounts figures are the most cheering economic data recorded since 2007 and they deserve to be celebrated. Equally, the Government policies that led to them deserve to be acknowledged and praised. But, most of all, it must be recognised that these figures could not have been achieved without the kind of communal effort and sacrifice that seemed so incomprehensible and feeble to those who took to the streets in other eurozone countries to protest at unavoidable government belt-tightening.