Business News

The former president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, has said that despite Brexit, the opportunities for Irish businesses to grow within Europe are infinite. Speaking in Dublin today, Herman Van Rompuy said that regulatory certainty and standards provided by EU frameworks continue to facilitate trade and help businesses to sell into a wide […]

The governments of Ireland and Britain have guaranteed the continued payment of state pensions, child benefit and other social welfare payments in the event of the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal. Thousands of people living here get pensions and other payments from Britain, while Ireland also pays people who live in […]

There’s been a surge in the number of companies here applying to Revenue to get the necessary documentation for trading with UK firms following Brexit. Revenue said over three times more companies applied in the month of February than in January for Economic Operators Registration and Identification (EORI) numbers. The EORI is the minimum requirement […]

Irish small and medium enterprises (SMEs) pay on average three percentage points more interest on loans than the European Union average on amounts up to €250,000. The introduction of Government-backed risk-sharing schemes, such as the Brexit Loan Scheme (where interest is capped at 4pc), are helping to address the difference, according to the Strategic Banking […]

BANKS are back to their old trick of increasing the charges for running a current account. Both Permanent TSB and Ulster Bank have angered customers by announcing changes that will mean more people will get caught paying fees. Remember, switching banks is actually a relatively easy process due to The Central Bank’s Switching Code. This […]

An Post is advancing plans for a nationwide network of self-service parcel locker stations to enable customers more conveniently access online deliveries and make returns. It will put it in competition with existing providers, including Parcel Motel, the service that is part of Nightline. That group was acquired by UPS in 2017. An Post said […]

There are 50,500 more people at work as unemployment plummeted by over 10pc in the last year. The numbers employed rose by just over 2pc or 50,500 people. This pushed the total number of people at work to 2.28 million. The numbers unemployed fell by 15,200 or 10.5pc to 128,800 last year, according to the […]

A new consumer monitor shows that 45% of all the properties sold last year were bought with cash or savings. The latest quarterly Consumer Market Monitor, from the Marketing Institute of Ireland and UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, shows that 55,000 homes were purchased in 2018, an increase of 8% on 2017. The monitor […]

Approximately 45pc of all properties sold in 2018 were paid for with cash or savings. This is similar to the level of cash purchases made during the recession years of 2009-2013, when mortgage approvals were at an all-time low. Overall and growth in the property market remained “sluggish” in 2018, despite a high demand for […]

Ireland is spending “hundreds of millions of euros” on preparing for a no-deal Brexit, which would be a “crazy outcome” of three years of EU-UK negotiations, Tánaiste Simon Coveney has said. “We are spending hundreds of millions of euros in Ireland preparing for a no-deal Brexit to try to protect Irish citizens in those circumstances,” […]