Kate English

Good morning, Joe.

I am heading to the Moulin Rouge.

Not the one in Paris.

Not the one in Paris.

The one in Grand Canal Basin.

Equally as good, though.

Yeah, so we got Q3 2025 data yesterday afternoon from the CSO.

What does it show?

GDP on an annual basis is up 10.8%.

Now, this is what we expected.

Why is there such a large surge in it?

It's all down to exports.

We saw a very large volume of exports at the first half of the year.

as we saw companies try and get in ahead of tariffs being introduced.

But if we move away from the GDP figure, which is valid, it needs attention, but not the only one, and look instead to personal consumption or modified domestic demand, because these are much more reflective of on the ground domestic economic growth here.

Personal consumption was up 2.4% on an annual basis, while modified domestic demand up 2.3%.

That strips out some of the kind of IP or aircraft leasing factors that can impact our GDP figures as well.

And for comparative purposes, 2.4% is really, really strong growth in an environment where we've had lots of external volatility this year.

And if we compare it to other economies, for example, the UK expected to grow only about 1.5% this year as per their forecast only last week.

Similarly, low levels of growth within Europe, France, Germany too.