A cascade of new data points to improving conditions in the real economy – and big challenges still to overcome the legacy of the crash.

A big fall in unemployment brought the jobless rate to 10.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2014, down from 11.1 per cent in the previous three-month period. This left the rate within a whisker of the Government’s 10 per cent target, an important psychological threshold which now looks easily achievable.

Unemployment hit 15.1 per cent in the year after Fine Gael and Labour took power, a dour time in which the pressures on the State seemed only to multiply. Though numerous problems remain, the atmosphere has changed.

It is true that the increase in the number of people working slowed in 2014 compared with the previous year, to 29,100 from 61,000 in 2013. Yet this masks a bigger rise in the number of people in full-time employment, up 39,600, and a 10,500 drop in the number of people in part-time jobs.

Some 1.94 million people were working in the State by the end of 2014 and 213,600 were unemployed, down 39,600 in the year. All of this feeds into improving prospects for the public finances and comes on top of record low borrowing costs on bond markets, thanks in no small measure to imminent bond- buying by the ECB.

That’s on the plus side, yet many strains remain. Fianna Fáil jobs spokesman Dara Calleary was quick to complain of a decrease in the number at work in the Border, midland, western and south west regions.

Such concerns are reflected in IDA Ireland’s new strategic plan, in which a push to boost regional employment is backed up with a €150 million property investment plan.

Still, IDA Ireland chief Martin Shanahan said it was companies who ultimately decide where they’re going to locate.

There were mixed signals meanwhile from the property market, the centre still of many pressures.

New Central Bank research suggests more than half of all mortgages taken out in 2007 remained in negative equity in mid- 2014, and picture was only a relatively better for properties bought in 2005 and 2006.

With debate well under way last month on new Central Bank mortgage caps to avert another property bubble, data from the Central Statistics Office showed residential prices fell at the sharpest rate for three years in January.

At issue in coming months is the extent to which the market responds to the new rules with any further price drop. In spite of the declines seen in January, property prices remained significantly higher than a year previously.