The Government is said to be exploring ways of excluding multinational fast-food chains from a reduced rate of VAT aimed at shoring up the hard-hit hospitality sector.
The Government has signalled that it will reduce VAT on restaurants and food-serving businesses in the budget from 13.5 per cent to 9 per cent to help them fight costs.
The Department of Finance’s Tax Strategy Group has costed the move at €675 million, a sum that would account for almost half the Government’s proposed €1.5 billion tax package. Eoin Burke-Kennedy has the details.
The median income of a person who bought a home last year was €84,400, almost 60 per cent more than the average wage, new data from the Central Statistics Office shows.
The data shows the figure has been rising steadily in recent years, up from €80,100 in 2023 and €75,600 in 2022. Colin Gleeson reports.
More than a quarter of home sales in Dublin in the third quarter involved landlords offloading rental properties, according to estate agent DNG.
The company’s latest report on the capital’s residential market highlighted what it described as “the negative impact” of recent rental sector reforms.
The NFL comes to Dublin: How it became the richest sports league in the world
It said the percentage of DNG sales by landlords or investors exiting the rental market increased to 27 per cent of all sales in the third quarter, up from 20 per cent in the previous three-month period., writes Eoin Burke-Kennedy
“The beauty of Lidl is that it does offer opportunities internationally. But I’m very happy in Ireland. We’ve a lot more to do here. We have significant expansion plans and I’m ready to keep the business moving forward and chasing down our competitors. That’s enough for now,” Lidl Ireland boss Robert Ryan tells Ciarán Hancock in our Business Interview.
There was a softening in mortgage approval activity last month, with approval volumes down 2.5 per cent year-on-year, data from the banks shows.
Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI), which is the representative group for the banks, said the number of mortgages approved fell by 17 per cent month-on-month and by 2.5 per cent compared with the same period last year, writes Colin Gleeson.
Many economic experts have contended that despite the damage he can inflict on Ireland’s economy, every-so-often Donald Trump is also capable of doing things that work to this country’s benefit.
The latest opportunity for Ireland could well be his plan to impose massive fees on the H-1B visas that the big American tech companies use to bring foreign workers to the US, writes Paul Colgan in Business Agenda.
It’s difficult to remember a time when both the Tories and Labour were simultaneously imploding. Normally one party’s difficulties are a godsend for the other.
But UK politics is fracturing and the established order with it.
“The Conservative Party is over, over as a national party, over as the principal opposition to the Left,” said MP Danny Kruger earlier this month after defecting to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Eoin-Burke Kennedy looks at the evidence in his Friday column.
The biggest US-listed companies keep talking about artificial intelligence. But other than the “fear of missing out”, few appear to be able to describe how the technology is changing their businesses for the better. Melissa Heikkilä, Chris Cook and Clara Murray report.
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