News

The Governing Council of the European Central Bank meets in Frankfurt today where it is widely expected to increase interest rates for the seventh time since it began raising rates last summer. The ECB’s base deposit rate is currently 3%. Market analysts are divided over whether the bank will increase rates today by another half […]

The number of homes provided by approved housing bodies grew by 10% last year, according to the latest report from the Irish Council for Social Housing. It amounts to almost 5,000 new social and cost rental homes – surpassing its target of 40% of total social housing delivery. The Government did, however, miss its own […]

Fear of losing money is the biggest barrier to people investing (67%), according to a survey by Bank of Ireland which also revealed low levels of investment knowledge. Other respondents were afraid of having their money tied up for years (36%), while 34% felt they didn’t have enough money to invest. Bernard Walsh, Head of […]

The country’s largest private residential landlord, Irish Residential Properties REIT, saw its revenue increase by 4.9% in the first three months of the year, driven by additions to its portfolio and stable rent collections. In a trading update for the three months to the end of March, it said that occupancy levels at its properties […]

Corporate property investment fell by 18% in the first quarter, as foreign investors paused their activity, new research has claimed. In total, €625m was invested in the Irish market during the initial three months of the year, with US investor interest in the market here easing. They injected €14.75m during between January and March, according […]

Recruitment for a new four-day working week pilot programme has been launched today to coincide with International Workers’ Day. Companies and organisations of all sizes from every sector are encouraged to join the trial which will be based on the ‘100-80-100 model’ where workers get 100% of their pay, for 80% of the time, in […]

The downturn across Ireland’s manufacturing sector deepened at the start of the second quarter of the year amid a sharper contraction in factory production and a sustained decline in new orders. According to the AIB Irish Manufacturing PMI for April, with the headline index falling to 48.6 from 49.7 in March and 51.3 in February. […]

The volume and value of new mortgages drawn down in the first three months of this year fell by around a third, compared to the final three months of last year. According to new data from the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland, 10,908 new home loans worth €2.87 billion were issued by lenders. The BPFI […]

The International Monetary Fund has today urged European central banks to “kill the beast” of inflation by pursuing interest rate hikes. “You need to go and kill that beast” the IMF’s European department director Alfred Kammer told reporters in Stockholm. He said “history is littered” with examples of policymakers who pause rate hikes only to […]

The country’s gross domestic product fell by 2.7% on a quarterly basis in the first quarter of 2023 but stood 6.4% higher than a year ago, a preliminary estimate reading from the Central Statistics Office shows today. The Government has long cautioned against using GDP to accurately measure economic growth as it is routinely inflated […]