The country's services sector expanded at the fastest pace in three months in May, a survey showed today, with new orders helped by a fall in the euro against the dollar and sterling.
The Investec Purchasing Managers' Index of activity in services, which covers businesses from banks to hotels, stood at 61.4 in May, up from 60.6 the previous month.
It had reached an eight-year high of 62.6 in December last year.
The index has stayed above 60 for 15 months and has not fallen below the 50-point line that separates growth from contraction since July 2012.
"We share the optimism of the respondents to today's report and expect to see further strong readings over the coming months at least," Investec Ireland chief economist Philip O'Sullivan said.
More than three times as many panellists reported growing business activity as experienced a slowdown, the economist said.
Today's survey also revealed that companies expect market conditions to improve further over the next year and sentiment was fractionally higher than in April.
Firms also reported a substantial increase in new orders last month, with the rate of expansion at the fastest pace in three months. New export orders also rose at a faster pace, with the UK and US the key sources of new business from abroad.
During May, the rate of job creation also picked up to the strongest this year so far, due to increasing new business, work on new projects and predictions of more new order growth.
Mr O'Sullivan said that the increasing job creation is not concentrated in any one area, with all four sub-sectors - business services, financial services, travel and leisure, and TMT - recording growth in headcount, as they have done for 18 successive months now.
However, input prices rose during the month amid reports of higher wage costs and the weakness of the euro against sterling and the dollar.
Output prices were also increased - they have risen each month for the past 14 months - but the rise was the weakest in three months.
