The National Competitiveness Council (NCC), (31 July 2015) published its annual benchmarking report, Ireland’s Competitiveness Scorecard 2015.[pdf 5.44MB] The Scorecard provides a comprehensive statistical assessment of Ireland’s competitiveness performance with regard to a range of countries with which we compete on international markets for trade and investment.
The Irish economy is the fastest growing in Europe, with GNP growth of 5.2% in 2014 being driven by a strong export performance and increasingly by new enterprise investment, which is underpinned by our improving competitiveness performance. Ireland has moved from 25th to 16th on the IMD Competitiveness rankings, with progress being made in areas such as the environment for start-ups, regulation, and access to credit. This improving competiveness is contributing to strong employment growth. The unemployment rate has fallen from over 15%in 2012 to below 10%and employment has grown for three consecutive years, increasing by 2.2% in the year to Q1 2015, with an additional 41,300 employed over the last twelve months.