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The Northern Ireland economy showed one of the strongest regional performances in the third quarter of last year, official data suggests.

The experimental figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) allow comparisons across the devolved nations and nine English regions.

They suggest the NI economy expanded by 1.4% compared to the previous quarter.

Only London grew more strongly with output up by 2.3%.

Growth in England as a whole was 0.6%, in Scotland it was 0.9%, while the output of the Welsh economy contracted by 0.3%.

The ONS cautions that regional data is more volatile than national estimates and so regional GDP needs to be carefully interpreted alongside economic trends both in the regions and in the UK.

More recent data for Northern Ireland suggests that growth continued into the fourth quarter of 2021.

However, it is likely that the economy has weakened significantly during the first half of 2022, as businesses and consumers deal with much higher energy prices, and some one-off public spending on coronavirus rolls off.

Meanwhile the Belfast shipyard, Harland and Wolff, has won a contract worth £8.5m with waste management firm Cory for the fabrication of 11 barges.

The barges will be used by Cory to transport London's recyclable and non-recyclable waste on the River Thames.