Remember when people used to comment on the number of cranes in the Belfast Skyline? If ever there was a sign of a changed city, and a changed economy, this was it. The crane numbers did certainly indicate a big growth in construction activity and therefore were a visual representation of the booming economy. But they told us nothing about the impending crash.

However if you’d been tracking cement sales in Ireland as one canny businessman I spoke to had, and realised they were now unsustainably high-you would have known the boom was heading to bust. So what are the questions you need to ask about the economy that’s relevant to your business? What are the hidden gems and signals that tell us more about what’s happening. What does the real economy, really look like?

Featuring ProfessorNeil Gibson from the Ulster Business School, Chris Grey from the ABBA driving school and Alicia Peyrano from The Little Citizens Boutique.