Prices for building materials are rising at their highest rate since October of 2023, according to the Department of Finance. As Jack Horgan-Jones reports. the Department outlined that during February, the wholesale price of construction materials jumped by 1.8 per cent. This compares to an increase of 1.5 per cent in January.
Start-ups have long been known to “pivot” to something else when their initial business doesn’t ultimately work out. Sometimes those pivots turn out to be successful, sometimes they don’t work out any better than the original plan. In Net Results, Emmet Ryan looks at Allbirds, which was formerly a high profile shoe business but now, barely believably, is switching to AI infrastructure. Could it work? Maybe. But it’s fair to say Emmet is sceptical of the plan, such as it is.
Headline inflation remained steady in March and Cantillon assesses what has widely been sign as a benign data set, while also running the rule over Premier Lotteries desire to ban people betting on bookmakers on the Lotto results.
As more and more digital banks enter the market here, Ciara O’Brien takes you through the ones you need to know about in this week’s tech feature. She also reviews the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 smart glasses.
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In World of Work, Margaret E Ward reports on the company employees shut out from hybrid working. What are they doing and how are they doing it?
Inflation remains steady; and Conor Pope’s energy saving tips
On today’s Inside Business podcast Cliff Taylor from The Irish Times discusses the latest inflation figures, and our Current Affairs Correspondent Conor Pope offers tips on cutting your energy bills.Headline inflation in the Irish economy remained steady at 3.6% in April, figures published today show.“It’s hard to know how things will go but it looks like we could have a turbulent three to six months where energy is concerned” Cliff Taylor said.For consumers that could mean the need to take a look at the small changes that could, by the year’s end, tally up to substantial savings.The time you spend in the shower, the amount of water you put in the kettle, and how often you put the immersion heater on are all behaviours worth looking at, explains Conor Pope.
More tech cuts are on the way. Oracle has told the Government that it plans to axe some 150 Irish jobs, about 15 per cent of its workforce in the Republic, part of a global programme of cuts reported upon in March as the software group deals with a cash crunch related to artificial intelligence spending. Ian Curran has the story.
Icon, the Dublin-based clinical trials for pharmaceutical groups globally, has confirmed that revenue accounting issues extended from 2023 and 2024 into the first nine months of last year, after completing an investigation into its accounting practices and controls. Joe has the story.
The euro value of Irish retail fuel sales, including diesel and petrol, surged by 7.7 per cent in March from February, according to provisional data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), underlining the initial impact of the global energy price shock from the US-Israeli attack on Iran. Colin Gleeson reports.
Ireland’s biggest estate agent Sherry Fitzgerald has appointed Pat Farrell as a non-executive director. Ciarán Hancock has the story.
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