A day after the Government said it would sell off the last of its stake in AIB, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe has moved to lift the State’s remaining €500,000 executive pay cap at that bank as well as PTSB. As Joe Brennan reports, both lenders remained subject to a pay limit after restrictions were lifted at Bank of Ireland in late 2022, following the sale of the State’s last shares in that lender.
Joe also reports that Energia Group, the electricity and gas utility controlled by New York private equity firm I Squared Capital, handed a further €40 million of dividends to its owners in April, weeks after they pressed the start button a sale of the business. The payment, disclosed in Energia’s financial accounts for the year to March, brings total distributions to more than €540 million since the US firm bought Energia, then known as Viridian, in 2016 for €1 billion.
Why does Ireland struggle so much with infrastructure? In his column, John McManus unpacks why this country has struggled with big projects for years and will continue to do so.
Most of us would like to give to charity if we could, but not everyone has the spare cash to do so. In Money Matters, Joanne Hunt shows how it can be done.
Ireland’s clean energy transition is mired in “policy gridlock and incoherence”, lobby group Ibec has claimed. In a new report, the employers’ group is highly critical of what it describes as the lack of a “clear and compelling vision” for what a net-zero economy “means and looks like in practice”. Eoin Burke-Kennedy read the report.
Dublin is the fifth most expensive capital city in Europe, but ranks far better for affordability when average wages are taken into account, according to the findings of a new report. Colin Gleeson reports.
The Labour Court has set aside three days next month to hear an appeal by Elon Musk’s X against a ruling that it must pay out an Irish record unfair dismissal award of €550,131 to a former executive. Gordon Deegan has the story.
Irish goods exports to the US fell by 62 per cent in April after US President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on all European Union (EU) imports. The latest trade figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show export volumes to the US dropped by €16 billion in one month after Mr Trump’s so-called “liberation day” tariffs announcement. Eoin has the story.
In Commercial Property, Ronald Quinlan reports that The Ivy is to open a second restaurant on Dublin’s Dawson Street.
Ronald also has details of a US investor poised to pay €120 million for three retail parks here, while a Merrion Square property in central Dublin is on the block for €4 million.
Irish people are paying for news more than ever before, as podcasts experienced a “surge in popularity” last year according to the Digital News Report Ireland. Hugh Dooley has read the report.
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