Celtic tiger out of recession!

In Article 17 of Reading and Understanding Economics I have given a definition of an economic recession (page 121) and then this is discussed in relation to the performance of the US economy at that time. Remember that economists define a recession as a severe economic slowdown normally defined as two or more successive quarters of negative growth. The recent data has just shown that the Irish Republic officially moved out of recession in the first quarter of 2010 with the latest data showing that gross domestic product grew by 2.7% during that period compared to the last three months of 2009. However, there is little real cause for optimism in relation to their other economic data. The number of people claiming unemployment benefit rose by 5,800 in June to hit a total of nearly 445,000. That left June's estimated unemployment rate at some 13.4% of the labour force.