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Motor claims costs rise 25%, tumble driers and energy costs, and how to deal with a heavy personal debt load

The best news, analysis and comment from The Irish Times business desk

Irish motor insurance claims costs rose by almost 25 per cent last year amid a spike in damage costs as crash rates rose following the pandemic. Photograph: iStock

Ciarán Hancock's face
Ciarán Hancock
Wed Dec 13 2023 - 06:36

Irish motor insurance claims costs rose by almost 25 per cent last year to €751 million amid a spike in damage costs as crash rates and inflation rose following the pandemic, according to new figures from the Central Bank of Ireland. Joe Brennan reports.

Irish people are increasingly concerned about climate change but still engage in inefficient behaviours such as heating empty homes, using cars for short journeys and leaning heavily on tumble driers, new reports from the energy watchdog suggest. Conor Pope has the details.

Are you struggling with your personal debt load? In Money Matters, Brianna Parkins outlines how seeking out expert advice is better than sticking your head in the sand and hoping the problem will go away. If you’d like to read more about the issues that affect your finances try signing up to On the Money, the weekly newsletter from our personal finance team, which will be issued every Friday to Irish Times subscribers.

Britain is suffering from a poisonous combination of stalled productivity and high inequality, and desperately needs a growth strategy to break out of a long period of stagnation, writes Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf.

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It took only four hours for the jury in a US court to reach a verdict that could blow apart the app store model that is worth almost $200 billion (€185 billion) a year. Fortnite-maker Epic Games’s claim that Google’s Play Store was anticompetitive hit home. Ciara O’Brien assesses what this means for the app store model that Google and Apple have perfected.

The Central Bank of Ireland said its gender pay gap stood at 3.9 per cent as of June 30th in favour of male employees, which was down one percentage point from 4.9 per cent a year earlier, writes Colin Gleeson

Waterland Ireland, the Irish arm of the Dutch private equity group, is anticipating a further slowdown in overall deal-making activity next year but still expects new opportunities to emerge in the Republic. Ian Curran reports.

The DAA, operator of Dublin Airport, aims to lodge a formal planning application on Friday to allow the airport to accommodate 40 million passengers a year. It comes as the council approved plans by Ryanair for a €40 investment in a new state-of-the-art four-bay aircraft maintenance hangar at the airport. Gordon Deegan has the details on both developments.

Email continues to be the top reason people use the Internet in spite of the boom in online shopping and the push by banks to force us to use their digital services, according to latest data from the Central Statistics Office. Ellen O’Regan reports.

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