Author Archives: splash

The number of job opportunities for professionals reached a record level last month, as multinational and Irish employers stepped up recruitment in Dublin and other regions, according to a survey of top job vacancies. There were 13,445 job openings available to professionals in April, up sharply from the 9,475 opportunities available a year earlier, with

Financial services company IFG is to continue to reduce its involvement in the Irish insurance market as it focuses more so on its UK operations. The company says it continues to explore options to divest its interest in the Irish market which is part of its non-core business. Its goal of divesting non-core parts of

The Bank of England kept interest rates steady at a record low 0.5% yesterday, judging that the outlook for prices and wages is still too weak for it to raise the cost of borrowing despite solid growth prospects. The bank issued no statement but governor Mark Carney will explain more tomorrow, when he presents a

Rising negative sentiment towards savings drove the national savings index lower in April. The Nationwide UK (Ireland)/ESRI Savings Index which measures overall sentiment towards saving, fell to 114 last month. The sub-index measuring the proportion of people who consider it to be a good time to put money away and whether government policy encourages people

Greece repaid €750m to the IMF a day early, just as eurozone finance ministers sounded upbeat on negotiations to complete changes to the country’s bailout programme. A suggestion from the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, that he may hold a referendum on the revised austerity package and membership of the euro even got resigned assent

Economist Alexandre Lamfalussy, one of the founding fathers of the European single currency, died on Saturday at the age of 86, Belgian media reported on Monday. No other details were immediately available. Lamfalussy, who left his native Hungary after World War Two and became a Belgian citizen, was the first president of the European Monetary

German chancellor Angela Merkel is coming under growing pressure from within the ranks of her own party bloc to give up on Greece for the sake of the euro. Members of Merkel’s Christian Democratic bloc are openly challenging her stance of keeping Europe’s most-indebted country in the 19-nation currency region. Even some officials in the

Senior debt advisers have warned that households continue to face paying down intolerable debt burdens despite new official figures showing that overall personal debt levels had fallen to a 10-year low. The total sum of the country’s household debt stood at €157bn in the final quarter last year, equivalent to a debt of €34,069 owed

Job security rather than workers’ salaries or disposable income has a far greater impact on consumer demand and retail rents, a report has found. Research from the ESRI and Savills Ireland shows the degree of certainty workers feel they have in their job plays a much bigger role in driving consumer spending that has been

Proposals for an arbitration system in the EU-US trade deal under negotiation have been well received by most EU countries including Ireland, Germany and France. Negotiations on this investor state dispute mechanism have been frozen for the past few months after a public outcry over potentially allowing business interests to overturn national laws in special