Markets remained jittery today as unrest in Libya sent oil prices higher, and the Iseq retreated towards the 2,900 mark.
"Macro events are taking over again," one Dublin broker said, noting that most markets started nervously today and volumes remained thin.
On the Irish market, Aer Lingus proved the most newsworthy stock with the announcement that it had made an exceptional provision of €32.5 million following negotiations with Revenue. The provisional settlement relates to redundancy payments made to staff in 2009. The stock was knocked by this news - it had been trading at 98 cent but fell back to 92 cent.
However a trader noted that this provisional payment represents just nine per cent of the airline's net cash. He said that the market tends not to pay much attention to "one-off" set-backs like this.
"It takes account of it and moves on. It's not a structural problem," he said.
Rival airline Ryanair was weaker due to rising oil prices. The airline closed 2 per cent lower, or seven cent at just under €3.36.
Banks had a volatile session today. After a slump on Wednesday, AIB jumped more than 6 per cent to 92 cent. However this translated a gain of just six cent as the stock is trading at such low levels. Bank of Ireland finished the day in positive territory, up 3.6 per cent, or about one cent, at 34.4 cent.
Index stalwart CRH slipped 11 cent to €16.00.
Overall the Iseq index closed down 0.24 per cent at 2,900.78. Across Europe, the UK's FTSE 100 and France's CAC40 both fell 0.1 per cent; Germany's DAX fell 0.9 per cent.
Additional reporting - Reuters