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A survey of business leaders in the Sunday Independent showed that a massive majority (84 per cent) believe that the Irish economy will start to pick up by the end of 2012 at the latest. But a substantial number of those polled – 33 per cent – predicted that the lift would kick in sooner, possibly by the end of 2011 and a smaller number (six per cent) said they expected things to start to improve this year.GNP, which excludes the profits made by multinational companies based here and is a bellwether of how the domestic economy is doing, will fall by one per cent this year, according to the Central Bank on Friday. That is a reversion of its earlier forecast of a 1.5 per cent drop.