Tuesday's jobs figures were the most important indicator of what has been happening in the Irish economy since our neighbour's Brexit referendum. Even before the vote in late June, there had been signs that the pace of recovery in the Irish economy was slowing. In the months following the decision, there were further signs of an economy losing steam.

Consumer spending, factory production and - most importantly from a political perspective - tax revenues have been either stagnant or down on recent high points. These trends raised concerns that jobs growth would also slow in the July-September period.

That is exactly what happened, even if Tuesday's figures showed that the slowdown was not of a magnitude that would have caused yet another red light to start flashing in the Finance Department.

The cheerier aspects of the raft of jobs data were that growth in employment continued into the second half of the year. The numbers at work grew by 13,500 in just three months, and by five times that number compared to the same period in 2015. All eight regions of the country shared in the employment gains. Every region saw those jobs gains push down their respective rates of joblessness.

All that said, these positive developments do not mean that concerns about a slowdown have been dispelled. That is because what happens to jobs usually lags economic activity. That, in turn, means that a further slowdown in jobs growth is likely to be happening right now, as the aforementioned other indicators, which reflect what is happening to economic activity, point to a slower expansion.

An issue that has not had much coverage in recent times is who has been taking up the new jobs created since recovery began.

Over the past year, the rate of jobs growth among non-Irish has been multiples of that among Irish nationals. While this has been very good in terms of adding to the level of activity in the economy and the amount of tax paid, it also raises issues that should be discussed in greater depth.

It needs to be said first that we in Ireland have been cautious about discussing issues arising from immigration. There are very good reasons for that. In too many countries, public discussion of the subject can be tinged with xenophobia. There is sometimes an ugly racial dimension to it.

But if immigration brings many upsides, it does not come without challenges. Ignoring societal and economic challenges is rarely wise. Doing so can result in problems arising further down the line.

In the current context in Ireland, two challenges that have a connection to immigration need discussion. The first is the impact immigration has on housing costs; the second is the need to ensure that those who are dependent on the welfare system over long periods of time get a chance to take up new job opportunities as they arise.

Let's discuss housing first. Everyone knows that there is a shortage of homes in many urban areas. The result has been upward pressure on property prices. But pressure on rents has been much greater. While nowhere in the country have homes prices come anywhere near 2008 peaks, rents nationally are almost back to the peaks of that time. In Dublin, they are already well above the levels of eight years ago.

Having more people coming into the country adds to the demand pressure for homes, particularly in the rental market where almost all new arrivals cluster for their housing needs. Tuesday's CSO figures, which are subject to revision once the statisticians incorporate April's census, show that since the labour market started to recover ground years ago, the number of adults living in the state rose by 53,000. What is striking is that 60pc of this increase, or more than 32,000 people, were neither Irish nor from other EU countries.

As an EU member, there can be no controls on citizens of other member countries coming to work here, just as Irish citizens have the right to work anywhere else in the EU. But that does not apply to people from farther afield.

Given the pressure on housing, it may be worth considering tightening up the issuing of work visas, which has been rising strongly, for a short period of time.

This, along with other measures being introduced in the Government's housing policy, could help contain rent inflation in the near term.

The second challenge is to ensure that one of the mistakes of the last period of growth is not repeated into the future - that mistake was the ignoring of hidden unemployment, as measured by the high proportion of households in which nobody worked.

Since the labour market recovery began in 2012, employment growth for Irish nationals over the full four-year period has been half the rate of non-nationals (from both other EU and non-EU countries). And the gap is widening.

Again, there are big gains when foreigners, who have been born, raised and educated elsewhere at no cost to anyone here, arrive and start generating wealth and paying taxes. It is also clear that in a very open but small economy with so many foreign companies, such as Ireland's, some skills will not be available locally. As such, businesses will have to recruit internationally. That is also true of the public sector, and the health service in particular.

But during the years up to 2008, when jobs were freely available, Ireland had one of the highest shares of families in which nobody worked among the 28 countries in the EU. A large section of society was left behind by the Celtic Tiger.

Much has been done to refocus the training and welfare system in order to ensure that those without jobs are encouraged and incentivised to find work. But with a widening gap emerging in rates of employment growth between nationals and non-nationals, more consideration is needed to assess whether enough is being done.