A near €10 million compensation bill a CRH subsidiary is due from a Finnish town will hit education, childcare and other services, its council claims.
A Helsinki court recently ordered the town of Karkkila to pay CRH subsidiary Rudus €9.5 million following a dispute over a quarrying permit.
The compensation amounts to half the town’s tax income in a year, according to the council, which paid Rudus the money immediately after the court’s ruling. Barry O’Halloran reports.
A group of credit unions and two representative bodies are taking the first steps towards creating a centralised treasury function for the sector that they say will help unlock €9.9 billion in mortgage and small business lending.
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The initiative, which is being spearheaded by five credit unions along with the Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU) and the Credit Union Development Association (Cuda), is a significant step for the industry after the Central Bank of Ireland announced landmark changes to the credit union lending framework earlier this year. Ian Curran has the details.
Nearly half the Irish population rely on private health insurance while the cost of private claims has risen by a third since the pandemic.
These were among the findings of new report on the extent of private health insurance in the Republic commissioned by Insurance Ireland from consulting firm Milliman.
The report found that 2.5 million people (46 per cent of the population) availed of private health insurance last year. Eoin Burke Kennedy reports.
Occupational healthcare provider Medmark has acquired Belfast-based Blackwell Associates to enter the Northern Irish market.
The acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, creates one of the largest occupational health groups in the country with a combined revenue for the all-Ireland health group in excess of €20 million.
Medmark works with public and private sector organisations to deliver workplace medical assessments, employee wellbeing services to more than half a million employees. Hugh Dooley reports.
Gothenburg was a ship building town right up to the 1980s. Today though, it is a much changed place. Dubbed Sweden’s “second city” – a moniker that is resented locally – it is playing a key role in the country’s efforts to dethrone Ireland as the Silicon Valley of Europe. Colin Gleeson reports in Agenda from a city that is transforming itself at a rate of knots.
US economist Nouriel Roubini - aka Dr Gloom - won his reputation back in the mid-2000s for correctly predicting that a giant housing bubble would soon engulf the global financial system, a notion that Wall Streeters dismissed as alarmist. Now he is predicting, says Eoin Burke-Kennedy in his column, against the grain, that productivity gains from AI technical advances will see US growth rise from an average of 2 per cent to 4 per cent by the end of this decade in spite of tariffs.
“We may be the newest brand in the market, with a fresh and innovative approach, but we’ve actually got over 200 years of health insurance market experience between us,” says Jim Dowdall, chief executive of Level Health, in our weekly interview slot with Joe Brennan. The company also includes chairman Oliver Tattan, chief financial officer Stephen Loughman and chief commercial officer Ruth Bailey. “Our view is that there is unfinished business in the health insurance market.”
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