Almost 300,000, or 54 per cent, of renting households in the Republic received some kind of State support to help with the cost of housing in 2020, a new study has found. This is more than double the number in receipt of equivalent housing supports in 1994. The shift away from building social homes directly to providing rent supports – the so-called bricks-to-benefits switch – has been one of the defining trends in housing over the past 30 years. Eoin Burke-Kennedy reports.
The arts can’t keep looking back to 2019, nor use digital to simply replicate, in a truncated form, analogue, writes Karlin Lillington in her weekly column. Digital offers enormous room for rethinking every aspect of performance and audience engagement. It’s a daunting task, but the pandemic has shown us that the survival and future growth of the arts sector will demand not just meeting but embracing this creative challenge.
Our man in Davos, Joe Brennan, finds that the red carpet is no longer being rolled out for China and Russia.
Former taoiseach Enda Kenny has been appointed as a non-executive director of Tipperary-based Envetec Sustainable Technologies Ltd, a start-up company focused on treating and eradicating biohazardous laboratory waste and material. Ciarán Hancock reports.
Helsinki-based Supermetrics is set to create 100 jobs in Ireland over the next two years as it opens a dedicated Dublin office. The roles will mainly be in sales and marketing, the company said, across a range of experience, from junior sales development representative roles to enterprise sales. Ciara O’Brien reports.
No housing bubble brewing / Davos is back
The European Commission says there's a limited risk of another housing bubble developing in Ireland due to stricter rules that have reduced risk in the financial system. The positive finding comes despite the fact that house prices are expected to continue to rise this year. Cliff Taylor gives his views on the matter. Also in today’s episode: after a gap of more than two years, the World Economic Forum has gathered again in Davos, Switzerland. Joe Brennan is there for The Irish Times and tells us what has been happening.
Technologies being developed in Ireland are set to transform the treatment of hard-to-treat solid tumours, painful osteoarthritis and debilitating pelvic health conditions such as overactive bladder. Seán Duke reports.
The extent of staff shortages as the economy emerged from Covid-19 closures has been surprising, writes Cantillon. There have been shortages for some time in high-tech sectors and particularly for key jobs in areas such as software development, some areas of the pharma sector and the fast-growing area of data analysis.
Cantillon also notes that whenever the main battleground in the Irish market moves to price, Aldi and Lidl benefit at the expense of the share of bigger chains – SuperValu, Tesco and Dunnes Stores.
In Ireland, we are sitting on €135 billion in our bank accounts and, according to the Central Bank of Ireland, at least €15 billion of that can be classed as “excess savings”, ie it is there to be spent, rather than earmarked for something like a house deposit, holidays or essential home maintenance. Ciara O’Brien finds out what you can do with a new generation of app-based investment platforms.
Ciara O’Brien reviews the Garmin Fenix 7S smartwatch, which sells for €1,000.
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