Irish domestic economy falls 0.8% in second quarter, GDP up 10.2%

Ireland's domestic economy fell 0.8% quarter-on-quarter from April to June, though growth for the previous three months was revised higher ‌and the more volatile gross domestic product rose 10.2%, Central Statistics Office data showed on Friday.

The drop in the second quarter, which is the first quarterly fall since the final quarter of 2024, was driven by weaker building and construction. Personal ‌consumption was 2.8% higher in the first six months compared to the same period a year ago. As Ireland's ‌large multinational sector often distorts GDP, officials prefer to use modified domestic demand as a more reliable gauge of the strength of the economy. It has grown strongly in recent years, including by 4.7% last year.

MDD growth for the first quarter was revised up to 1.7% ⁠from 0.3%, ​which left growth 3.1% higher ⁠for the first six months of the year compared to 2025. Ireland's finance ministry forecast in April that MDD may slow to between 1.5% ⁠and 2.1% this year, depending on the scale of the impact on inflation and economic output from the Middle East conflict.

VOLATILE GDP ​IMPACTS EURO ZONE FIGURES The 10.2% quarter-on-quarter rise in GDP from April to June followed a 7.8% first-quarter ⁠fall and compared with an initial estimate of 3.9%, which raised the average across the euro zone.

Some analysts prefer to exclude Ireland when studying underlying ⁠trends ​in the bloc. Irish GDP jumped 12.3% in 2025 due to surging pharmaceutical exports to the U.S. ahead of threatened tariffs and continued booming demand for weight-loss drug ingredients produced by U.S. pharmaceutical companies in Ireland.

While the first ⁠quarter fall reflected tariff-related stockpiling being unwound, the jump in the second quarter was also partly due to a difference ⁠between how companies value products held ⁠in stock and the final export price. "A lot of the production went into stocks in Q1 and is now being exported in Q2," John Sheridan, senior statistician ‌at the Central Statistics ‌Office, told a news conference.