Author: Philip Lane

The CSO recently launched a handy new site, which is a ‘one stop shop’ for a range of macro/financial data (clicking on the links brings you to more detailed data summaries).

Micheal Collins at NERI has a paper on this topic here; and presentation slides here.

Also, take a look at this new online calculator here.

It is obvious that the banking crises in Ireland and Spain share many similarities.   However, it is also clear that the Spanish banking crisis is quite a bit smaller relative to its GDP (even if it is bigger relative to euro area GDP).

• The credit boom was not quite as strong in Spain as in Ireland.  The credit/GDP ratio in Ireland rose from 104 percent in 2002 to 210 percent in 2008; the increase in Spain was from 100 percent in 2002 to 188 percent in 2008
• A recent DB report calculates that real estate loans peaked at 77 percent of GDP in Ireland but only 29 percent of GDP in Spain, while estimated non-performing loans stand at 52 percent of GDP in Ireland but only 17 percent of GDP in Spain
• Ireland’s Troika funding of 67.5 billion euro is equivalent to 43 percent of Irish GDP, the Spanish funding of 100 billion is equivalent to about 9 percent of Spanish GDP.

Details below.  The new position of chief economist is especially relevant in the context of the Fiscal Treaty, since key implementation issues (assessing level of potential output, evaluating feasible speed of fiscal adjustment) will require considerable technical input from the Department of Finance.

• Chief Economist Department of Finance
• Head of Banking Policy Department of Finance

Talks and presentations from the from ‘The Irish Economy. What happened? What next?’ series in the Central Library are now available here. Speakers were Conor McCabe, Michael Taft, Ronan Lyons, Gregory Connor and Simon Carswell.