The Central Bank has said Covid-19 has "triggered an extremely severe economic shock" which is fundamentally different from anything the economy has been through before.
In its Quarterly Bulletin, the bank says the economy could shrink by 8.3% of GDP this year and the unemployment rate could peak at 25% in the coming months.
Over the next three months, it believes the economy here could collapse by 25%. It has pencilled in a partial recovery later in the year but this, it says, is highly conditional and the risks to its forecasts are on the downside.
The path ahead for the economy, it says, depends on the path of the virus both here and abroad. The Central Bank is predicting between 450,000 and 500,000 jobs will be lost, most in the