Skewing the gender gap; hot-desking beckons; and getting NY buses working

Big Four firm Deloitte has got ahead of the looming rules on gender pay reporting with some surprising results, writes Cliff Taylor. Overall, the firm cut the gender pay gap among its 2,500 staff to 6.8 per cent last year from 10.1 as recently as three years ago. But when partner remuneration is added to the figures, that gap increases more than fourfold to over 30 per cent.

As workers begin the return to more normal office life, Pilita Clark has a word of warning for all those looking to shape a post-Covid world of hybrid working. It will, she argues, inevitably lead to more of the loathed fashion for hot-desking. That's bad news for workers and their bosses, she argues, but cost may make it inevitable.

CitySwift, the Galway transport technology group founded by two former Longford school classmates, has been chosen to work with New York City's public bus operator to help improve its vast commuter network with big data and machine learning. Kevin Duggan in New York reports that its founders hope the move will be a launchpad for expansion across the Atlantic.

The State's social housing stock rose by fewer than 10,000 units between 2017 and 2020, according to the National Oversight and Audit Commission. And, in that time, the four Dublin local authorities, where demand for social housing is strongest, added just 2,637 between them, an average of 659 a year – with numbered actually falling in Dún Laoghaire Rathdown. Eoin Burke-Kennedy has the details.

Ryanair loses €96m in final three months of 2021

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Stocktake: Loading up on value stocks

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Grid Finance names former top Department of Finance official John Moran as chairman

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‘When buying gear for running or hiking, the investment pays dividends’

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National Broadband Ireland was telling an Oireachtas committee last week why it would not now meet its already dramatically reduced target of "passing" 60,000 remote Irish homes by today, Somewhere along the line, broadband became politicised. "And Leinster House, underpinned by a strong rural lobby, decided it would write a blank cheque to fix the problem. Due diligence and cost-benefit analysis were shoved to one side," Eoin writes in his column.

In the UK, the British government approved the extradition of Irish-born Mike Lynch to the United States to face criminal fraud charges, hours after a London judge ruled the tech tycoon was dishonest in the $11 billion (€9.9 billion) sale of his company, Autonomy, to Hewlett Packard.

Irish business and consumer sentiment bounced back strongly in January as fears about the likely impact of the Omicron variant receded. Bank of Ireland's monthly Economic Pulse finds that nearly half of workers are anticipating a pay rise in the next 12 months. – and the same number of employers expect to increase pay by more than workers expect, writes Eoin-Burke-Kennedy.

Finally, in our weekly outside Opinion slot, wind energy executive Val Cummins says Ireland is missing out on a chance to be a leader in offshore wind energy despite the State's undoubted advantages, and she points to Scotland as an example of a country that has refused to let problems, including poor grid capacity, hold it back.

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