The National Competitiveness Council's annual benchmarking report shows emerging cost pressures and capacity constraints weaken Ireland's competitiveness.
The report, published today, also shows that a reliance on a narrow export base threatens the country's economic sustainability.
The Scorecard 2018 provides a comprehensive statistical assessment of Ireland's competitiveness performance with regard to a range of countries with which Ireland competes on international markets for trade and investment.
A range of indicators show that the Irish economy continued its expansion in 2017 and into 2018.
However, speaking at the launch of the report, Council Chairperson Professor Peter Clinch sounded a cautionary note.
He said Brexit remained the single biggest, and most immediate, threat to Ireland's medium-term prosperity.
"We are beginning to see a return to domestic policies that threaten the sustainability of the economy such as rapid house-price inflation, transport congestion, failure to meet our climate obligations, and failure to invest sufficiently in R&D and to address the funding crisis in higher education," he also warned/
Professor Clinch added that, while the headline measures of economic growth were positive, "it is worrying that Ireland's debt per capita is the highest in the EU which places us in a very vulnerable position should an external economic shock occur.
"A significant concern is that the sustainability of Irish growth is threatened by the reliance of the economy on a small number of exporting companies and export markets and a narrow range of exported products and services.
"Ireland is on an inevitable path to competitiveness loss placing us in a vulnerable position if the international economic conditions were to worsen," he stated.
