Irish GDP grew by 5.2 percent in 2016, best in EU again

DUBLIN, March 9 (Reuters) - Ireland (Other OTC: IRLD - news) 's gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 5.2 percent in 2016, making it the European Union's fastest growing economy for the third successive year as a robust recovery remained strong ahead of potential threats from Brexit.

Ireland has rebounded quickly from an economic crash almost a decade ago that pushed it into an international bailout in 2010, and the momentum has continued into this year with unemployment more than halving from a peak of over 15 percent during the crisis.

Strong jobs growth boosted consumer spending by 3 percent last year and the economy expanded by 2.5 percent on a quarterly basis from October to December, down from 4 percent in the prior quarter, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said on Thursday.

While Ireland's finance department sees growth staying above 3 percent in each of the next three years, it has estimated that a "hard Brexit" - involving Britain losing access to the EU's single market on quitting the bloc - could knock around 3.5 percent off Irish GDP within a decade.

Ireland is widely seen as the EU economy most vulnerable to Britain's departure from the bloc owing to its close trading relationship with its nearest neighbour.

Ireland's growth last year, which was more than three times the euro zone average of 1.7 percent, compared to a massive expansion of 26 percent in 2015 which was the result of a major revision to the stock of capital assets.

That called into question the relevance of using GDP to measure the true health of Ireland's open economy and the CSO plans to phase in a new yardstick - adjusted gross national income or "GNI (KOSDAQ: 192410.KQ - news) " - by the end of 2018.

(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by John Stonestreet)