About one in every 20 loans issued to date under the Government-backed home energy upgrade loan scheme (HEULS) to help households lower their carbon footprint and fuel bills has been found to be in breach of its terms, according to sources.
The two-year-old scheme, which has seen 1,135 loans to a combined value of €56.1 billion being drawn down to the end of March, is funded by the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland (SBCI) through commercial banks. Joe Brennan has the details.
It is far too early to say whether peace will hold in the Middle East, writes Ian Curran in Agenda. It’s not even certain that the current US administration is competent enough to resolve a Middle East crisis of its own making, one that has cost thousands of lives in the region and caused immeasurable harm to the global economy through higher energy prices and damaged oil and gas infrastructure.
This is the landscape in which the Central Bank of Ireland published its latest forecasts for the Irish economy this week.
Porter Privé has taken over management of three Dublin city centre serviced office spaces formerly operated by Paddy McKillen jnr’s business Grafter, including the building used by tech firm OpenAI for its Dublin headquarters.
The new venture set up by Emma Kennedy, who headed up Grafter until April of last year, now manages 41 Lower Leeson Street, 10 Ely Place and the building formerly occupied by Topshop on Grafton Street called Smyth House, which is used by OpenAI for its Dublin office. Killian Woods reports.
Will a Middle East peace deal make any difference to inflation?
Before Covid hit in March 2020, KPMG managing partner Ryan McCarthy tells Ciaran Hancock in our Friday interview, staff attended the office on average 3.4 days a week, being off-site with clients the balance of the time. This figure is now running at 2.3 days a week. “So we’ve lost a day [per week, in the office],” he says, adding that graduates are expected to attend four days per week.
From the autumn, he says KPMG will push for graduates to attend the office “all the time”.
“If the graduates are effectively in all the time, the managing teams need to be here all of the time, and the partners, too. I’m not sure if it’s possible, but I would certainly like to get [the average] back to north of three days a week if I could.
Karen Clince, the founder of Tigers Childcare, has been chosen as The Irish Times Business Person of the Month for May, an award run in association with Bank of Ireland.
This follows the sale of the group to UK operator Kids Planet Day Nurseries. Tigers operates 34 crèches across the State, mostly in Dublin and the surrounding commuter counties, catering to 3,200 children and employing 640 people.
The temptation for the EU to start a trade war to hit back at Chinese manipulation is strong, writes Alan Beattie in our Friday column, but this strikes him as an example of the politician’s syllogism. (First premise: we must do something. Second premise: this is something. Conclusion: we must do this.)
Meanwhile, the temptation to see the human brain as a kind of machine has been around for a long time. Marvin Minsky, a pioneer in artificial intelligence, used to provocatively call humans “meat machines”, writes Sarah O’Connor.
So it is no surprise that some people at the forefront of AI now believe their models could soon become conscious. If the brain is akin to a computer, then why wouldn’t a super-powerful computer develop consciousness too?
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