Ireland has been ranked as the third most competitive country in the euro area by the latest IMD World Competitiveness Rankings. It has also been placed as the 11th most competitive economy in the world out of 63, up from 13th last year. The development has been welcomed by the National Competitiveness Council (NCC), but…
Formal public sector pay talks between the Government and unions will resume at the Workplace Relations Commission. The negotiations opened yesterday and were adjourned after around four hours. The talks come after unions triggered a review clause within the existing public sector pay deal ‘Building Momentum’ due to rising inflation. Under the current agreement, public…
The Taoiseach has described the legislation on the Northern Ireland Protocol published by the British government yesterday, as “anti-business and anti-industry”. Speaking on his way into Cabinet this morning, Micheál Martin said the action by the UK represented a “fundamental breach of trust”. He said he did not believe that the legislation was well thought…
Ryanair Group chief executive Michael O’Leary said today that bookings at Europe’s biggest budget airline are strengthening and he expects summer fares to be between 7% and 9% higher than pre-pandemic levels. Speaking to Reuters, he said the load factor, a measure of how well an airline is filling available seats, should be around 94%…
Smurfit Kappa has resumed some operations at a packaging plant in the UK after a large fire ripped through the facility overnight, the local fire service said. West Midlands Fire Service said more than 100 firefighters had made progress containing the blaze that they were alerted to yesterday evening. It said there were no reports…
The euro zone will avoid a recession this year and growth will accelerate noticeably after bottoming out in the second quarter, a key European Central Bank survey shows. The 19-country currency bloc has been hit by fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has sapped confidence, investment and households’ purchasing power via sharply higher fuel…
Activity in the construction sector continued to increase in May but at its slowest pace in more than a year, according to the latest Construction Purchasing Managers’ Index from BNP Paribas Real Estate Ireland. It represents the third consecutive month of slowing growth in the sector, as rising prices and declining sentiment impacts activity. The…
Around 4.5 million cheque payments were made in the first quarter of 2022, according to the latest Payments Monitor from Banking & Payments Federation Ireland. While the figures is a new quarterly low for cheque volumes, it appears high in the age of digital banking. Gillian Byrne, Head of Payments, BPFI agrees that, “4.5 million…
Oil prices slipped today but remained within touching distance of three-month highs as fears over new Covid-19 lockdown measures in Shanghai outweighed solid demand for fuels in the United States, the world’s top consumer. Brent crude futures for August were down 77 cents, or 0.6%, at $122.30 a barrel as of 0448 GMT after a…
The Minister for Finance has said he is not considering the introduction of price caps to deal with soaring inflation. Paschal Donohoe was speaking after the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said that annual rate of inflation rose to 7.8% in May. This is the highest rate in 38 years, and up from 7% in April….