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Rarely have we been at such a low ebb economically, but Ireland is the only country in the EU where business leaders are more optimistic about the future than they were last year.

According to an international study carried out by management services company Grant Thornton, the rest of the continent continue to have a gloomy attitude about their future business prospects and while Ireland’s business leaders are hardly predicting that it will be soon all rosy in the garden, at least we’re looking up.

The survey says that 30 per cent of Irish business leaders were either slightly or very optimistic about what 2012 may bring and although that is a lot less than half, it is a sizeable increase on the 20 per cent who held similar feelings last year, and we are the only country in the EU with a more optimistic outlook than 12 months ago.

Despite the surge in optimism, we’re still only fifth out of 13 EU countries in the old optimism table, but it’s a damn sight better than last year’s 12th place ranking.

More than 70 per cent of Irish businesses expected that revenues would be equal to or greater than 2011 figures and just short of 80 per cent had similar feelings about their profitability levels.

Pat Burke of Grant Thornton put the growth in Ireland’s optimism down to the fact that, having had to deal with economic woes for longer than most countries, we’re starting to adopt in an effort to see the light.

“Although business failures have been prominent since the downturn began, Irish companies have responded to the Darwinian choice of adapt or disappear with a more fit-for-purpose offering,” he said.

Only a small reason to feel a bit better about the year ahead perhaps, but we’ll take any small kernel of hope at the moment.