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Air safety law, insulating homes from airport noise and Tesco wants to be a loved brand

Business Today: the best news, analysis and comment from The Irish Times business desk

Why is the Biden Bounce not getting any credit, wonders Paul Krugman. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

Conn Ó Midheach's face
Conn Ó Midheach
Wed Aug 17 2022 - 06:42

Senators believe the Government should seek independent expert advice on amendments to the law that will create the State’s new air travel safety regulator. Barry O’Halloran has the details.

Tesco Ireland says it will spend more than €50 million this year on new stores and refits of its existing outlets, as it targets further growth in the market here as normality returns to the grocery sector after the worst of the pandemic. Mark Paul reports.

Solar power could have eased the electricity supply bottlenecks that last week prompted warnings from the national grid, says one developer. National electricity grid Eirgrid last week issued two alerts warning that high demand and low supply had left reserves lower than ideal, increasing the risk of power cuts should something go wrong, writes Barry O’Halloran.

Irish medtech start-up EpiCapture, which has developed a test for the early detection of prostate cancer, is in line for funding of up to €1.5 million after it made the finals of the EIT Health Wild Card competition. Ciara O’Brien reports.

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Tesco Ireland’s new chief executive, Natasha Adams says that one of her ambitions for the Irish business is that “Tesco is a loved brand by Irish consumers”, Mark Paul interviews her.

Paul Krugman asks why doesn’t Joe Biden get credit for the Biden boom, which is a real thing? The answer: Inflation has run faster than wage growth, so real wages are significantly down and it doesn’t matter whether the driving forces are outside of Biden’s control.

Glenveagh Properties, one of the State’s largest home builders, recently faced criticism over a design plan they put forward to Minister Darragh O’Brien, in a bid to ease Ireland’s housing crisis. The plan suggested an overhaul of existing planning regulations, which would replace apartments with more own door homes. A move that CEO Stephen Garvey describes in this episode of The Inside Business Podcast as, “a win-win for society across the board.”

Garvey tells presenter Ciarán Hancock that the changes Glenveagh outlined in their plan are all based on extensive research into consumer needs and wants. “When we decided to come and do the study, what we did was we put ourselves in the boots of the consumer ... what’s the consumer salary, what can they afford.. and we worked ourselves backwards, that’s what we tried to do,” he says.

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