Author: Practicenet

A single person is putting in an average of 86 days of work – which would take you from January 1 into the middle of May – just to afford the annual rent on a one-bedroom home. Soaring rental costs year-on-year mean that workers are being forced to put aside every cent they earn to […]

Q I am 27 and have just returned from working abroad in the fashion industry. My parents have a retail shop unit in a poor location, but have given it to me at cheap rent. Sales are abysmal, as the footfall I need isn’t in the area. Do you think I can build up the […]

Enterprise Ireland is aiming to increase Irish exports to the Asia Pacific region by 50pc by 2020. Over the past five years, exports to the Asia-Pacific region from Ireland more than doubled since breaking the €1bn mark in 2012, delivering double-digit growth for Enterprise Ireland clients in 2016 with a 16pc year-on-year gain. As part […]

Loans from Linked Finance to Irish small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have passed the €50m mark. The milestone coincides with the peer-to-peer lending platform celebrating five years in business. Launched by Peter O’Mahony in 2013, with the aim of using technology to connect SMEs looking for finance with lenders keen to back Irish businesses while […]

The Central Bank here is to launch simulated cyberattacks on banks, to stress test the resilience of the sector to sophisticated hacking. The attacks will conform to an ECB framework for controlled and bespoke tests against cyberattacks in the financial market based on earlier models developed in the UK and the Netherlands. It is not […]

The fDi Top 25 ‘European Cities and Regions of the Future’ for 2018 have been revealed, and despite concerns around Brexit, London has taken the top spot. Meanwhile Dublin has climbed to 2nd place, the 13th issue of the Dublin Economic Monitor reveals. Dublin’s improved performance knocks Paris into third. This, along with other key […]

Eurozone economic growth slowed as expected at the start of 2018, although economists said temporary factors were partly behind the weakness and that the economy should continue to expand strongly this year. The growth rate pushed the eurozone behind the United States, but still ahead of Britain – which registered its weakest growth since 2012. […]

Skills shortages have leapfrogged access to finance as the major concern of construction sector surveyors, according to a major new report. Just over eight in 10 surveyors in Ireland say the building sector is now experiencing a skills shortage, an increase of 7 percentage points in the last six months, according to the joint report […]

The UK government agreed yesterday to order its overseas territories such as the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands to make secretive company ownership information public by the end of 2020 to try to tackle corruption and tax avoidance. The move was hailed as a major victory by campaigners in the fight against tax […]

Irish brands such as Fruitfield, Kerrygold, Barry’s Tea, Jameson and Cheesestrings could find themselves caught in a barrage of price cuts amid intensifying concentration among UK grocery chains. With Sainbury’s, the UK’s second-largest grocery chain, having agreed this week to buy Walmart-owned Asda, the UK’s third-biggest, retail analysts are predicting a renewed wave of grocery […]