Ireland’s gross domestic product (GDP) estimate for the last three months of 2022 showed growth of over 10%.

This figure, adding to growth in 2021 and 2020, means that the Irish economy ended last year almost 40% larger than pre-pandemic.

There is always an argument that, due to the large multinational sector here, Ireland’s GDP is a fairly meaningless number as much of the reported profit growth does not have a huge real-world effect here.

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However, analysis from economics firm Pantheon Macroeconomics shows that a lot of the growth was from the export of goods – actual stuff made here – rather than the esoteric intellectual property which is usually such a large factor.

While the pharma industry obviously had a huge boost from pandemic demand, Pantheon’s chief eurozone economist Claus Vistesen signalled out agriculture’s contribution to the bottom line.

A full breakdown of data for the fourth quarter is not available yet, but we can look at the numbers until the end of September to show how agriculture continues to pull its weight for Ireland. See Figure 1.

Output for the sector, corrected for inflation, in the first nine months of 2022 continued the rising trend that has been in place since 2019.

As Figure 1 shows, real output to September was greater than what was achieved in all of 2016, 2017 or 2018.

The data that is available for the last three months of 2022 points to no slowdown in the agriculture sector, both in dairy and beef (see Figure 2).

The value from the strong performance in agriculture to the Irish domestic economy was highlighted in last year’s KPMG-Irish Farmers Journal Agribusiness report, which showed that the sector supported almost 180,000 jobs in the Republic of Ireland in 2021. That accounts for around one in 14 people employed in the entire country, and a much larger proportion of those in the rural economy.

So, while it is easy to dismiss some of the headline numbers from the Irish economy as unrealistic, taking the time to dig under the surface does show, once again, that agriculture continues to be a critical industry for this country.