Some 50,000 customers are left with worthless insurance
Up to 50,000 Irish insurance customers have been left with no guarantee of cover after an underwriting company shut down. Danish company Qudos has gone into liquidation, with payouts on claims being put on pause. It means that Irish customers’ cover with the firm is essentially worthless, and those awaiting payment of a claim from […]
Renters will soon be able to find out how much previous tenants charged
Renters will be able to know what a previous tenant was paying for a room under laws to be brought to Cabinet next week. Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy has indicated he can overcome legal challenges to set up a ‘rent register’. It would allow people looking to rent a room see the average prices in […]
Bamboozled by bills: 25pc of householders believe they were overcharged
Householders are being bamboozled by bills – with many fearing they are being overcharged, new research has found. A quarter of consumers believe they were overcharged on at least one bill in the last year, research from price comparison site Switcher.ie shows. Most people feel they have no choice but to trust their supplier to […]
Theresa May rejects accusation of hiding Brexit facts as full legal advice published
EU ‘ready for no-deal Brexit’ if UK sinks deal Irish backstop for UK’s withdrawal deal could last ‘indefinitely’, legal advice states Report also warns of Britain becoming stuck in “protracted and repeating rounds” of negotiations Theresa May said she is listening to concerns on Brexit backstop to find way forward DUP says UK government’s Brexit […]
Digital tax kept alive by France and Germany
Europe’s efforts to tax large tech companies were kept on life-support yesterday as France and Germany proposed a final-hour compromise that scales back the broad plan initially envisioned by Paris. Ireland, along with other countries including Sweden, opposes the tax plan and even the watered down proposals will face resistance. The updated proposal is to […]
Mortgage approvals jump by 11pc as values also increase
Mortgage approvals jumped in October, both in terms of volume and value. Across all types of borrowers, banks approved a total of 4,262 mortgages in October, up 11.4pc month-on-month. This is a 13.6pc increase in approvals year-on-year, figures from the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland show. First-time buyers accounted for the lion’s share of activity, […]
Drive down wage costs, renegotiate supplier prices to boost profits
Q. Could you give me a few words of wisdom on improving the profitability of a manufacturing business? A. Sales are vanity, profit is sanity. It is good to see that you are focused on the bottom line. In most manufacturing businesses wages tends to be the biggest cost. It is not so much about […]
Tax windfall won’t boost spending – Paschal Donohoe
Bumper corporation tax receipts pushed the overall tax–take in November to €631m ahead of target. Department of Finance show that taxation receipts for the month of November were €938m higher than in the same month last year, boosted by very strong corporation tax receipts. November is the month when must businesses pay their tax, making […]
You’d be crazy not to tap into open-source software and communities
Last week in this diary I discussed our remote-working strategy. By adopting a company culture of remote and flexible work, we gain access to much larger pool of global talent. The trade-off is that you have to work harder to ensure team cohesion. Making this work is not just about fancy tools like Slack, it’s […]
Should I accept pension transfer value?
Query: I left my former employer two years ago after working there for almost 20 years. I have an entitlement to a pension from that company’s defined benefit (DB) pension scheme. I have received a letter from my former employer, offering me an ‘enhanced transfer value’. Should I transfer my benefit entitlement out of that […]