Economy could shrink by up to 13% due to virus emergency

The Irish economy could shrink by up to 13% this year because of the coronavirus emergency.

That is according to the worst-case scenario by financial advisory firm EY, which says it could contract by 7% if things improve quickly.

Chief Economist with EY, Neil Gibson, says they have come up with two scenarios.

“In our more severe scenario, we have GDP contracting by as much as 13% in the year,” said Mr Gibson.

“But I think we’re all hoping that we’ll be at least or better than our baseline outlook, which is that the economy would contract by about 7%.

“We might have job losses of around 180,000 over the course of the year.”