From today's irish times:
[broken link removed]
Hard to know whether to take a glass half full or empty view of this.
On one hand it's a 3% increase year on year which on the face of it is good.
However if you take out car sales (30% growth! probably helped by the scrappage scheme) we actually have a 3% drop, which is worrying. Also I think Feb this year would have been boosted a little by the cold spell in Jan which would have deferred some spending, as people couldn't get out and about.
To me it looks like the economy is still slowing down
[broken link removed]
Hard to know whether to take a glass half full or empty view of this.
On one hand it's a 3% increase year on year which on the face of it is good.
However if you take out car sales (30% growth! probably helped by the scrappage scheme) we actually have a 3% drop, which is worrying. Also I think Feb this year would have been boosted a little by the cold spell in Jan which would have deferred some spending, as people couldn't get out and about.
To me it looks like the economy is still slowing down