Austrian bank to offer Irish home loans, bird protection clashes and iPhone gripes

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The chief executive of Austrian bank Bawag confirmed on Thursday the group’s plan to offer Irish home loans through a mortgages start-up it acquired in recent months, saying the group likes the potential profit returns it could generate in the market. Bawag, based in Vienna, took over the company behind MoCo, an Irish business that has been looking to enter the mortgages market, in March for a nominal amount of €35. Joe Brennan has the details.

Government designation of a special protection area for birds in the Irish Sea clashes with plans for one of several offshore wind farms with which the State recently struck electricity supply deals, writes Barry O’Halloran. Malcolm Noonan, Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, last week announced that Government planned to designate 230,000 hectares off the Dublin, Louth and Meath coasts as a special protection area for birds.

Those side buttons on all current iPhone models are soul-destroying. They’re easily the worst user interface Apple – normally stellar on usability and user interfaces – has introduced in my 35 years of using Apple products, writes an unhappy Karlin Lillington in her weekly column.

Student accommodation: A market plagued by bed shortages, rising rents and 51-week leases

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An attempt to buy the next election with a giveaway budget would be a gross miscalculation

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The outlook for interest rate cuts is changing - so should Irish borrowers be worried?

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IDA gives Intel €30m in aid package

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Vyra’s founders have a mix of environmental, sustainability, green technology and computer science qualifications between them, writes Olive Keogh, and in 2021 Jack Dwyer, Luke Fagan and Eoin Le Masney pooled their expertise to develop the Vyra edtech solution, which is aimed at large companies already reporting on sustainability and those that want to put it more front and centre in their operations.

Cantillon finds former Davy shareholders putting down marker before 2024 payday and how in the Department of Finance how the glass is always half empty.

Will Government’s plan for a 20c tax on disposable coffee cups have the desired effect, or could it end up hurting businesses? On this week’s episode from our Inside Business podcast, co-owner of Olive’s Room restaurant and co-founder of Vytal Ireland, Michelle Moloughney, gives Cliff Taylor her thoughts on the divisive levy.

Mark Broadie, a mild-mannered, long-standing professor of decision sciences at Columbia Business School in New York City, had more than a decade earlier invented a new golfing statistical measure, called “strokes gained”. Sujeet Indap finds out how he revolutionised golf analytics.