Less than 12 per cent of new buildings in some counties are being inspected to see if they comply with building regulations, the head of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI) has warned. Setting out his stall as the society’s new president, Kevin Hollingsworth said that Ireland’s approach to the enforcement of building regulations was totally inadequate and required “a cultural shift”. Eoin Burke-Kennedy has the details.
Not long after I turned 30, I was sent to Washington DC to be the bureau chief for an Australian newspaper in conditions that today seem unbelievable, writes Pilita Clark in her weekly column. The move was less impressive than it sounds. The bureau consisted of one staff member – me – and I was not the youngest foreign correspondent at the time.
But what was extraordinary by today’s standards was the magnificence of my expat benefits. My rent was generously subsidised. I had top-shelf health insurance and allowances for a car, a phone, newspapers and a slew of other expenses. Had I had children, their school fees would have been paid too.
Construction activity as a whole remained steady last month but work on housing projects increased in a positive sign for the Government’s housing targets, according to the latest BNP Paribas Real Estate Ireland index for the sector, writes Eoin Burke-Kennedy. The company’s index for construction activity came in fractionally below the 50 no-change mark “to signal broadly stable output”. This was down from a 53.2 reading in April and ended a two-month sequence of expansion.
Somewhere along the way, governments stopped building public housing to the same extent, selling off a significant amount of existing stock while switching to providing rent supports instead, writes Eoin Burke-Kennedy in his column. But with more people renting because of higher prices and more people in the private rental market because of the lack of social housing, this policy has spectacularly backfired.
Ifac’s new report: more ‘fiscal gimmickry’ from the government
Michael Chadwick, the former chief executive of Grafton Group, has built up a 26.3 per cent stake in a small British industrial equipment maker, new stock exchange filings show. Mr Chadwick has increased his stake in a company called HC Slingsby, a British supplier of industrial and commercial equipment, twice so far this year. Barry J Whyte reports.
Northern Ireland’s economy has enjoyed a strong bounce in activity since the return of powersharing arrangements in February. According to Ulster Bank’s latest purchasing managers’ index (PMI), the North’s private sector recorded strong growth, with output, new orders and employment all increasing at sharper rates last month. Eoin Burke-Kennedy reports.
Flutter’s recent decision to move its primary listing to the US, with the possible spectre of Smurfit Kappa following shortly, brings the future of the Irish equity market back into sharp focus. The State needs to incentivise public equity investment as the scarcity of new listings on the Irish Stock Exchange is a cause for concern for wider economy, argues John Mullane, chief investment officer at Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland, in our weekly opinion slot.
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