Moritz Kraemer is not one to be bamboozled by the insane economic numbers put out by our Central Statistics Office this week. S&P's chief sovereign ratings officer is used to cutting through the noise, having earned the nickname "Mr Scissorhands" in some European capitals as he downgraded a raft of sovereign ratings during the financial crisis – including stripping France and Austria of their triple-A ratings.

"The country today is the same as the country yesterday," Kraemer said in response to questions from Cantillon on what S&P thought of news this week that the Irish economy had grown by a staggering 26 per cent last year.

The German, who also speaks English, French and Spanish, can’t be accused of using contorted linguistics beloved by most of his economic doctorate peers in getting his point across.

Having upgraded Ireland to A+ a year ago, S&P currently has the most optimistic stance on the State among the three main global ratings agencies.

And in signalling clearly that he’s more interested in the underlying numbers of Ireland’s economy than the headlines, Kraemer has also taken a sanguine view of the impact of recent events on the other side of the Irish Sea.

Ireland emerged from the financial crisis “with a black eye, yes, but they have come out, so we think they can weather a UK Brexit”, Kraemer said days before the referendum.

It subsequently pulled its top-notch AAA rating on the UK after the vote, saying Brexit was a “seminal” moment that will herald a long and painful period of uncertainty.

While S&P has said the UK quitting the EU has no immediate impact on its Irish ratings, as the economy is “resilient enough”, Kraemer said it may reduce the pace of the State’s impressive recent reduction in its debt ratio in recent years.

Still, you can be sure he saw right through Minister for Finance Michael Noonan’s statement this week that the GDP jump last year had pushed Ireland’s debt-to-GDP ratio below 79 per cent, from a previous estimate of 94 per cent.