Irish Economy 2012: IBEC, the main Irish business lobby group, today published its first Quarterly Economic Outlook of 2012 [pdf], which says that the challenging economic outlook, both domestically and in the wider eurozone, reinforced the urgent need for the upcoming Government jobs strategy to include ambitious new stimulus measures to support jobs and growth. The group said interest rate cuts by the ECB (European Central Bank) will raise the cash available for discretionary spending by households with mortgages by 6.5% this year. however, because of "increased uncertainty in Europe and globally," it has cut its forecast for 2012 GDP (gross domestic product) growth to 0.9%.