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The Northern Ireland economy continued to grow in the first quarter of 2022, official figures from Nisra suggest.

Output was up by 0.4% compared to the final quarter of 2021 and by 7.8% compared to the same period a year ago.

NI economic output is now at a 15-year high and just 0.1% below the record output level recorded in the middle of 2007.

From late 2007, Northern Ireland experienced a housing crash which caused significant economic damage.

Northern Ireland's performance in the first quarter was weaker than the UK average: UK GDP grew by 0.8% quarter-on-quarter and by 8.7% year-on-year.

However, the NI Statistics and Research Agency (Nisra) says that over a three-year time period Northern Ireland has grown more strongly with output up by 4.8% compared to UK GDP growth of 1.3%.

Nisra uses the three-year comparison in an attempt to mitigate the economic volatility arising from the pandemic.

Service sector growth

In recent months, Northern Ireland's economic data has become intensely political as supporters and opponents of the NI Protocol attempt to construct economic arguments to support their positions.

However, the data is inconclusive with Northern Ireland doing better than the UK average on some metrics and worse on others.

In the first quarter of the year, growth in Northern Ireland was largely driven by the service sector which had a positive contribution of 0.4 percentage points (pps).

The Public Sector and Production/manufacturing sector also had positive contributions with 0.2 pps and 0.1 pps.

However, the Construction sector had a negative contribution of 0.3 pps; construction has faced some of the biggest problems with cost inflation and supply chain delays.