Project Eagle, funding for Marlet and the state of the Irish office market

Two senior business figures are to be prosecuted in connection with the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation into the sale for £1.2 billion of Nama's Northern Ireland property loan book, Project Eagle. Gerry Moriarty has the details on this, with Barry O'Halloran explaining what has led to this point.

Pat Crean's Marlet Property Group has secured €65 million in development finance from AIB to fund the construction of One Lime Street, a new scheme of 216 apartments it is delivering in Dublin's south docklands. Ronald Quinlan reports.

And still in commercial property, Peter Hamilton takes an in-depth look at the state of the Irish office market in light of our collective embrace of working from home. Can the office market survive? For one thing, developer Johnny Ronan tells us, "the days of packing them in like sardines" is probably behind us.

One business that boomed during lockdown is delivery group DPD, which says it averaged 730,000 parcels per week at the height of Covid-related restrictions. This is double what the company would normally expect to handle, reports Peter Hamilton.

How your country’s history affects the way you think

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Project Eagle: What was it and why is it in the news?

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Two men face fraud charges over £1.2bn sale of Nama’s NI loans

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Stocks decline on poor corporate earnings

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New figures from the Banking and Payments Federation meanwhile confirm that contactless payments also soared in the second quarter of the year.

Mark Paul is back from his holidays, a road trip that took him through no fewer than 17 Irish counties. He explains in Caveat that he encountered the good and the bad of tourism during the break, with some particularly old failings unfortunately in evidence.

John FitzGerald this week considers the experience of German unification and the effect it had on the attitudes and outlooks of the people living in the newly united country. He muses on what Irish people could learn about "the challenge of forging a shared outlook on this island from a fractured past."

Working from home can challenge us in many ways, sometimes making a dent in our professional confidence. Olive Keogh looks at how leaders can counteract this by encouraging their staff and emphasising their faith in people's ability to get the job done.

This week's Wild Goose is Galway native and NUIG graduate Michael Gilmore, who has made a success of a career in executive recruitment in the Middle East. He tells Barbara McCarthy about how a random decision he made during a night out in 2013 led to his new life in Saudi Arabia.

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