News

A leading bank has reported a surge in people applying for home improvement loans. Bank of Ireland said it has seen a 38pc rise in consumers seeking to borrow to do work on their properties. However, the average loan size has not changed in the first three months of this year compared with last year, […]

A €220,000 fund has been made available for innovative early stage projects that addresses health or social issues in Ireland. Social Innovation Fund Ireland (SIFI) has called for applications from organisation as it announced the launch of Animate 2017. The €220,000 fund will be shared between 11 successful applicants who should submit their concepts before […]

Contactless payments mean shoppers are increasingly using debit cards as an alternative to cash. New figures from the Central Bank show there was a 14pc rise in the value of spending on Visa and MasterCard debit cards in retail outlets in March, with a total of €2.7bn spent. This amounts to an extra €331m transacted […]

CBRE has called on the Government to follow the UK’s Build To Rent (BTR) model, where some £27.7bn (€33bn) of equity is currently targeting the sector across the water. The property sector consultants said there is an opportunity to attract significant capital from European and US institutional investors and to speed up efforts to resolve […]

There has been a 19.1pc fall in the number of long-term claimants on the live register since April 2016. The number of males who are long-term claimants decreased by 18,986 – or 21.7pc – in the year to April 2017, while the number of female long-term claimants decreased by 7,390 (14.6pc), according to the latest […]

In light of the current cyber attacks which have affected more than 200,000 people in over 150 countries, Richard Brown, director of the national cyber security centre, has advised that the most common way of dealing with the threat of cyber attacks is good practice, especially the updating of anti-virus systems regularly. Speaking on Rte […]

The surge in property prices has pushed up the net worth of households.The debts of consumers here are also falling faster than elsewhere in the European Union. New figures from the Central Bank show that the average household in this country now has a net worth of €137,000. It has risen because of the strong […]

More than 1,200 people will attend today’s FutureScope conference in Dublin. The event aims to bring together 300 startup and scale-up businesses with entrepreneurs and large enterprises to develop opportunities for working together. Delegates will hear about evolving trends and how they are expected to shape the world, with more than 90 speakers and panellists […]

Savills Ireland has launched Workthere, a new service to help growing businesses find flexible, co-working, and services office space across Ireland. The brokerage service and website listing platform will offer a professional, easy, and transparent way for office providers to let their space and for occupiers to identify flexible working space that fits their individual […]

This is a far cry from the first half of 2014, when over 26,000 customers switched, although this was mainly due to the exit of Danske Bank and ACC Bank from the current account market. “The main reason for inertia in switching current accounts is fear that something will go wrong,” said Simon Moynihan of […]