The GDP growth gures do point to a strong export performance in 2020 – due to multinational-dominated pharmaceuticals and computing services.4 However, the issues of using GDP to measure economic activity in Ireland are well known, and aggregate economic statistics can only provide a high-level overview of how an economy is performing.
One thought that was uppermost in our minds was the desire to transfer the positive qualities which we have associated with 50 years of stable money in Germany into the new era of European monetary union. That was important to me from the very outset.