The National Competitiveness Council (NCC) published its annual benchmarking report, Ireland’s Competitiveness Scorecard 2017 on 20 July.

The Scorecard provides an assessment of Ireland's competitiveness performance in comparison with a range of countries with which it competes for trade and investment. 

Ireland moved from 7^th to 6^th in the IMD’s annual World Competitiveness Yearbook 2017. Economic growth, improved public finances, trade and a strong labour market performance have all contributed to Ireland’s improved international competitiveness.

The Council finds that while Ireland’s competitive performance continued to improve into the first half of 2017, a number of downside risks persist. In terms of the positive messages emerging, overall economic growth is being sustained, resulting in employment growth and a more favourable fiscal balance. Ireland performs relatively well in objective measures of well-being (income, education attainment, air and water quality) and health.

Conversely, factors weakening our competitiveness include Ireland’s continued high cost base, our dependence on a narrow range of exporting sectors, a series of labour market challenges (i.e. relating to long term and youth unemployment), infrastructural bottlenecks and relatively weak productivity performance in many sectors of the economy.      

The full report is available here.