Industrial production in EU sees largest fall in Ireland 

Additionally, out of the 28 member states, the biggest monthly drop in production was also registered here, with Ireland seeing a 13.4% decrease in December when compared to November.

The information was released today by Eurostat, the EU's statistical office.

In the EU, industrial production was down by 0.5% in December compared to the previous month, while this fell to 0.9% in the eurozone.

When comparing the figures over 12 months, there was an increase in average industrial production of 1.3% in the EU and 1.1% in the eurozone area.

The decreases in the EU were seen in the production of capital goods, like machinery, by 5.5%, as well as falls across the board in the production of durable consumer goods, for example cars, energy, intermediate goods and non-durable consumer goods, such as food.

Across the 28 countries, the biggest annual decreases were seen in Ireland (19.8%), Spain (6.7%) and Croatia (6.6%).

The highest increases were registered in Denmark (14.3%), Hungary (5.8%) and Estonia (5.7%).

When comparing December 2018 with the previous month, the largest decreases in industrial production were registered in Ireland (13.4%), Malta (5.2%) and the Netherlands (3.2%).

The highest increases were observed in Denmark (11.6%), Luxembourg (3.5%) and Latvia (3.3%).

In Ireland, figures provided by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that production for manufacturing industries was 14.2% lower in December than in November.

Industrial production for the three months of October 2018 to December 2018 was 8.2% lower than in the preceding three month period, the CSO found.

Production has fallen each year in December, according to Eurostat data.

In December 2017, production decreased by 0.5% when compared to the 12 months previous, while in December 2016 there was a 1.6% annual reduction.