This publication is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources.
Early estimates indicate that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has fallen by an estimated 0.7% in Quarter 4 (Q4) 2023, when compared with Q3 2023.
The result was driven mainly by decreases in the multinational dominated sectors in Q4 2023.
Using the early estimate for Q4 2023, GDP is estimated to have decreased by 3.4% when compared with the same quarter in 2022.
GDP for the full year 2023 is estimated to have decreased by 1.9%, when compared with 2022.
26/01/2024 - An earlier version of this release incorrectly showed the growth rate in Figure 1 of -2.3% in Q3 2023 for the seasonally adjusted quarter on quarter growth, it is -1.9% as listed in Table 1.
| Qtr on Qtr | |
| Q1 2020 | 3.06777715107875 |
| Q2 2020 | -5.51597935162168 |
| Q3 2020 | 12.4350954100556 |
| Q4 2020 | -5.02273075944022 |
| Q1 2021 | 10.9656641694238 |
| Q2 2021 | 2.67692245545663 |
| Q3 2021 | 3.25813919686844 |
| Q4 2021 | -2.91486374112215 |
| Q1 2022 | 6.13183701125128 |
| Q2 2022 | 2.43783518786542 |
| Q3 2022 | 3.48772116146061 |
| Q4 2022 | -1.57887989580028 |
| Q1 2023 | -1.87823493738943 |
| Q2 2023 | -0.364486203148562 |
| Q3 2023 | -1.91111709 |
| Q4 2023 | -0.724846731177675 |
| Year on Year | |
| Q1 2020 | 8.34480477741131 |
| Q2 2020 | 1.97893730279173 |
| Q3 2020 | 11.349108883638 |
| Q4 2020 | 4.64380098089081 |
| Q1 2021 | 12.7635241351386 |
| Q2 2021 | 21.7238568789867 |
| Q3 2021 | 12.3819321089571 |
| Q4 2021 | 14.294399663713 |
| Q1 2022 | 8.7842467849865 |
| Q2 2022 | 9.2951712208386 |
| Q3 2022 | 9.36689322582949 |
| Q4 2022 | 10.2380172137519 |
| Q1 2023 | 2.58748591705718 |
| Q2 2023 | -0.305055518798147 |
| Q3 2023 | -5.76963894722555 |
| Q4 2023 | -3.36921489838807 |
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (26 January 2024) published its latest Preliminary GDP Estimate for Quarter 4 (Q4) 2023. This is a Frontier Series publication and care must be taken when interpreting these results as methodologies may change and data sources may be incomplete.
These preliminary results are subject to revisions in the Quarterly National Accounts (QNA), which will be published with results for Q4 2023 in early March when additional data sources are available to the CSO and will be further updated following the release of the Annual National Accounts for 2023.
Commenting on the release, Rachel O'Carroll, Senior Statistician in the National Accounts Data Collection and Quality Division, said: “In today’s release, GDP is estimated to have fallen by 0.7% in Q4 2023 in volume terms when compared with Q3 2023, driven by decreases in the multinational dominated sectors of Industry and Information & Communication in Q4 2023. GDP is estimated to have decreased by 3.4% when compared with the same quarter of 2022.
These preliminary estimates are based on forecasting and data sources that are limited in scope when compared with those used for compiling GDP in the CSO’s Quarterly National Accounts. The data sources include information from the CSO Large Cases Unit, Retail Sales, Administrative Payroll Data and other indicators of activity (See Background Notes for more details on these estimates and the methodology used to calculate the preliminary results). Company profits may be subject to year-end adjustments which are not available in time to be included in this early estimate of GDP. Data from Q4 2023 may therefore be subject to a higher degree of revision in future QNA publications than data from the Q1, Q2 or Q3 2023 reference quarters.”