News

The new Help-to-Buy scheme for first-time buyers, announced in the Budget last October, opens for applications today. First-time buyers can recoup up to €20,000 in a tax refund to put towards the cost of purchasing a property. Just last week, the Central Bank said that first-time buyers would only need a 10pc deposit, no matter […]

European stocks were little changed, after two straight weeks of gains, as investors kicked off the last full week of trading of the year. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index fell just 0.13pc in London. The Stoxx 600 is on course for its first annual decline since the peak of the sovereign-debt crisis in 2011, while […]

Dunnes Stores and SuperValu now hold an equal share of Ireland’s multi-billion euro grocery market, as the pair battle it out for supremacy among consumers over Christmas. New figures from research group Kantar Worldpanel show the retailers each have a 22.5pc share of the market. Dunnes Stores, headed by Margaret Heffernan and Frank Dunne, snatched […]

It could be summer before everyone who lost a good-value tracker mortgage is identified and contacted by their lenders. So far, about 8,200 mortgage holders who lost trackers through the actions of their lender have been identified by the banks, the Central Bank said. But there are indications that this number is expected to rise […]

Bank of Ireland has admitted over-charging thousands of its mortgage customers. It is the latest twist in the tracker mortgage scandal. The bank had already restored 2,100 customers to good value tracker rates in 2010. Now it says it has found another 600 cases where homeowners were wrongfully denied a low-cost tracker rate. And the […]

Four firms have been given the potentially lucrative mandate to manage the planned sale of around 25pc of AIB, including Ireland’s Davy. The Department of Finance has appointed Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Davy and Deutsche Bank as ‘Global Coordinators’ to assist in a potential initial public offering (IPO) of AIB, which is slated to […]

Property prices continue to rise nationwide, as a lack of homes for sale keep the pressure on buyers. New figures show that prices rose an average of 7.1pc in the year to October. This compares with an increase of 7.6pc in the year to September, the Central Statistics Office said. In Dublin, residential property prices […]

Wage disputes in the public sector threaten to drive up costs across the economy, according to the ESRI think-tank. A report published today also says there is little clarity on the difference between public and private sector remuneration. In its quarterly economic commentary, the ESRI warns we must “generate a reliable estimate of the public-private […]

The Central Bank expects UK financial services firms affected by Brexit to make a decision on relocating here or elsewhere in the EU in the first half of 2017. At a press briefing to launch its latest macrofinancial review, Ed Sibley, director of credit institutions, said firms had visited Ireland on fact-finding missions but he […]

The dollar climbed to the highest level since 2003 against the euro and gold plunged as the prospect of a steeper path for US interest rates filtered through markets. US stocks fluctuated after the worst day in two months. The dollar extended its advance against major and emerging-market peers after the Federal Reserve’s first interest-rate […]