New figures out today show that there was no growth in the economy in the 2nd quarter of the year.
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) says that GDP which measures the total value of goods and services in the economy remained unchanged between April and June.
That is when compared with the previous quarter.
There was some growth in GNP which is a measure of the domestic economy.
The period between April and June this year saw increases in manufacturing, energy production and construction in Ireland.
But any growth in those sectors was offset by declines everywhere else including transport, software production, and communication.
The result is a flat economy with no growth in Q2 of the year.
When you strip out the profits made by foreign multi-nationals and focus on the domestic economy there was growth in GNP terms by 4.6% as the period saw an increase in net exports.
But all-in-all these figures continue the trend witnessed for the past year.
That of a flat economy with little growth will make it more challenging for the government to hit its end of year targets under the EU-IMF deal which rely on economic growth.
Meanwhile the figures show that on the expenditure side of the accounts personal spending declined by 0.4% on a seasonally adjusted basis between Q1 2012 and Q2 2012.
While capital investment declined by 29.4% and government expenditure decreased by 3.9% over the same period.
Read the entire report href="http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/releasespublications/documents/economy/2012/qna_q22012.pdf">here
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