since mid - 2014 are working ; noting the increase in downside risks in recent weeks, the governing council will review and possibly reconsider the monetary policy stance in early march. in relation to the longer - term agenda for the euro area, the financial crisis also made clear that the original institutional design of the euro area suffered from a lack of risk - sharing and crisis management mechanisms. while there has been significant progress in reforming the institutional setup of the euro area, the recent five presidents ’ report highlighted that further reforms could help in improving the resilience of the monetary union. this reform agenda should be a high priority for european policymakers. another favourable recent development has been the twenty per cent depreciation of the euro against the dollar in the last eighteen months, which has been especially helpful for ireland through both trade and financial mechanisms. that said, the recent depreciations of many emerging market currencies is a countervailing force in terms of the overall trade - weighted exchange rate for the euro area. it is important to recognise that ireland ’ s recent economic performance has been broadly based, with domestic sectors now making a significant contribution to overall growth performance. while we do not have final data yet, the likelihood is that gdp grew by 6. 5 – 7. 0 per cent in 2015. looking ahead, the latest forecasts suggest that the economy will continue to grow rapidly this year, with gdp growth expected to moderate slightly to around 5 per cent. it is always necessary to point out that measured gdp is only a limited guide to economic performance, especially in relation to highly - globalised economies such as ireland. financial transactions within multinational firms or lumpy investments such as in new aircraft can have a sizeable effect on measured irish gdp. still, faster growth in consumption and employment confirm that the domestic economy is growing at a robust pace. this reflects the confluence of several positive factors, including the employment - rich nature of the recovery, a less constrained policy environment, the boost to purchasing power from lower energy prices, the of course, in addition to this electronic payments system, the central bank is responsible for the issuance of notes and coins through the banking system, which entails a considerable logistical and security operation. the ending of production of one and two cent coins will deliver cost savings ; the recent rounding campaign has proceeded quite smoothly. the central bank also operates the deposit guarantee system ( dgs ), which protects deposits up to €100, 000 per person per institution. for

phase. and fiscal incentives for the already over - dimensioned construction sector continued for far too long. while the overall headline figures for the government ’ s finances showed a comfortable position, and the debt ratio fell to 25 per cent of gdp, stable sources of revenue had been displaced by volatile ones, and large expenditure commitments were undertaken making the future evolution of the public finances over - dependent on a continuation of the housing boom. getting the public finances back on track after the collapse of the property boom would have been painful enough, but the added borrowing resulting from the bank failures ( and from the assumption by government of banking debts ) was the straw that broke the camel ’ s back, triggering a loss of access to international financial markets as awareness grew of the scale of the losses. quick action to negotiate a programme of financial assistance from the imf, and from official eu lenders, stabilised the situation and eventually enabled the government to finance much of the additional borrowing on favourable terms. the very fact that the most significant banking failures outside of ireland in this crisis occurred in non - euro area countries ( iceland, latvia, the uk, the us ) does help to emphasise that the irish crisis was not a creation of the euro area. true, there were major banking failures in euro area countries too, spain, netherlands, belgium, germany, france and so on. banking excesses were essentially a global phenomenon in the first decade of the 2000s. yes, irish banks probably found it that bit easier to access foreign funds when no account needed to be taken of exchange rate risk. but iceland ’ s banks also sourced international funds without much difficulty. in the past, exchange rate regimes did not come complete with specific external supervision of domestic policies. to be sure, the international monetary fund ( imf ) has conducted surveillance of its members ’ fiscal policies for decades, regardless of their exchange rate regime. ireland ’ s peg to sterling was of course not accompanied by banking supervision conducted by the bank of england. nor did the european monetary system have a banking supervision arm. and that was the decision also when the euro area was established : creation of something like what has now been established as the single supervisory mechanism ( ssm ) would have been seen as a step too far by anti - federalists. still, in its enthusiasm for forging an understanding of the euro area as the most relevant policy unit for its actions, the ecb may have gone too far in the other direction of failing to appreciate the dangers posed by