The Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP) is an annual process which the European Commission undertakes using a scoreboard of 14 headline indicators and 25 auxiliary indicators to screen for any macroeconomic imbalances that may occur in Member States. Each of the 14 headline indicators contain a threshold, set by the European Commission, beyond which economic imbalances are determined to have occurred.
All EU member states have obligations to ensure that their economies do not exceed the various thresholds on the headline indicators. This publication is designed to help users to verify the European Commission's data on Ireland and provides additional analysis of all of the headline indicators and some of the auxiliary indicators. The cut off for inclusion of 2015 data for each country was 24th October 2016. Some data may have been updated/revised since this date as part of the regular production cycle of each domain. The information shown in the MIP scoreboard is based on the data available for the Alert Mechanism Report 2017, published in November 2016.
| EU Average | Austria | Cyprus | Germany | Greece | Ireland | Portugal | |
| 2006 | 4.64285714285714 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| 2007 | 4.5 | 1 | 7 | 1 | 6 | 5 | 6 |
| 2008 | 4.21428571428571 | 1 | 6 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 6 |
| 2009 | 4.82142857142857 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 9 | 7 |
| 2010 | 5.17857142857143 | 2 | 8 | 2 | 8 | 10 | 9 |
| 2011 | 5.25 | 2 | 8 | 2 | 7 | 10 | 9 |
| 2012 | 4.96428571428571 | 2 | 9 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 8 |
| 2013 | 4.25 | 2 | 8 | 3 | 8 | 6 | 8 |
| 2014 | 4.14285714285714 | 2 | 8 | 3 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| 2015 | 3.60714285714286 | 3 | 9 | 2 | 6 | 6 | 4 |
In Figure 1 above, we have shown the number of indicators which have breached the Commission's Macroeconomic Scoreboard thresholds for selected EU countries. For example, in 2015 Ireland's borrowing from non-residents (shown in the Net International Investment Position - Indicator 2) has breached the threshold of minus 35% of GDP. This, along with five other breaches, gives us the Irish figure of six breaches in 2015. We have shown this through time for the selected countries and with the EU average shown in the blue bar.
| Table 1 Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure Scoreboard for Ireland, 2011-2015 | |||||||
| Ireland | Thresholds | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | |
| External Imbalances and Competitiveness | |||||||
| 1 | Current Account Balance as % of GDP (3 year average) | -4%/6% | -2.8 | -2.1 | -0.8 | 0.4 | 4.7 |
| 2 | Net International Investment Position as % of GDP | -35% | -138.3 | -137.3 | -131.7 | -162.1 | -208 |
| 3 | Real Effective Exchange Rate (42 IC - HICP deflator) (3 yr % change) | ±5% | -9.6 | -12.2 | -3.9 | -3.6 | -5.9 |
| 4 | Export Market shares (5 yr % change) | -6% | -10.47 | -15.65 | -7.54 | -11.97 | 38.26 |
| 5 | Nominal ULC (3 yr % change) | 9% | -13.51 | -8.3 | 4.0 | -0.5 | -18.1 |
| Internal Imbalances | |||||||
| 6 | Percentage y-o-y change in Deflated House Prices | 6% | -16.9 | -15.2 | 1.1 | 15.1 | 8.3 |
| 7 | Private Sector Credit Flow as % of GDP, consolidated | 14% | 16.2 | -0.6 | -1.4 | 2.5 | -6.7 |
| 8 | Private Sector Debt as % of GDP, consolidated | 133% | 270.9 | 278.8 | 267.3 | 281.3 | 303.4 |
| 9 | General Government Sector Debt as % of GDP | 60% | 109.6 | 119.5 | 119.5 | 105.2 | 78.6 |
| 10 | Unemployment Rate (3 year average) | 10% | 13.5 | 14.4 | 14.2 | 13.0 | 11.3 |
| 11 | Percentage y-o-y Change in Total Financial Sector Liabilities2 | 16.5% | -2.2 | -1.8 | -2.7 | 23.1 | 9.5 |
| Employment Indicators | |||||||
| 12 | Activity rate - % of total population aged 15-64 | -0.2% | -2.9 | -1.4 | 0.4 | 0.6 | 0.8 |
| 13 | Long term unemployment rate - % of active population aged 15-74 | 0.5% | 6.9 | 5.5 | 1.0 | -2.0 | -3.7 |
| 14 | Youth unemployment rate - % of active population aged 15-24 | 2.0% | 15.8 | 6.4 | -0.8 | -5.2 | -9.5 |
| 1Break in time series | |||||||
| 2This indicator did not breach the threshold for the 2014 figure in last year's MIP Scoreboard. However, it has done so under this year's data | |||||||
| revisions. See the scoreboard on the previous publication to see the threshold breaches in 2014. | |||||||
Table 1 (above) provides the MIP Scoreboard for Ireland for the years 2011-2015. Where indicative thresholds are exceeded, cells in Table 1 are highlighted in blue.
In 2015, six out of the 14 MIP indicators for Ireland exceeded their indicative threshold. These indicators were:
- Net International Investment Position
- Deflated House Price Index
- Real Effective Exchange Rate
- Private Sector Debt
- General Government Sector Debt
- Unemployment Rate
Balance of Payments, Central Statistics Office, Ardee Road, Dublin 6
E-mail: bop@cso.ie
Tamanna Adhikari (+353) 1 498 4034
Sarah O'Rourke (+353) 1 498 4306
Christopher Sibley (+353) 1 498 4305
