Interest rates down but people still feeling the cost of living pinch

Interest rates fell on both sides of the Atlantic yesterday, with both the Fed and the Bank of England taking them down a quarter point. However, there was little clarity about intentions over the medium term with the Fed offering no guidance amid the uncertainty following Donald Trump’s re-election in the US and Bank of England only indicating there would be no more rate cuts this year as it expects inflation to rise on the back of the recent budget there.
Pepper’s effort to repossess a woman’s home have been stalled after a High Court judge was less than impressed that the most of the mortgage document put forward by the lender as evidence in the case was redacted.
Inflation may be slowing dramatically in Ireland – and across the euro zone – but prices are still rising and, as the general election campaign begins, analysts note that many people across Ireland are still feeling a cost of living squeeze. The rate of growth overall may have slowed to 0.7 per cent, writes Eoin Burke-Kennedy but inflation is many times higher than that for many goods and services, including store cupboard staples.
An editor at RTÉ who figures she was €238,000 out of pocket because she spent 11 years engaged as a contractor rather than a permanent member of staff will have to settle for the €10,500 offered by the broadcaster, the Workplace Relations Commission has determined. RTÉ has been asked to give the unidentified editor another 12 days to consider the offer.
Dermot Desmond is the biggest shareholder in Mountain Province Diamonds as well as holding a chunk of its debt. So he will hardly have been pleased to see the group report falling sales, a net loss after the cost of financing its debt and doubts from the company’s directors that it will have the financial wherewithal to meet a repayment schedule when some of that debt matures in the next 18 months. Barry J Whyte reports.
In Agenda, Barry J Whyte examines the fallout for one of Ireland’s most highly regarded builders – the Cosgraves – as two of the three brothers who founded the business over 40 years ago die within a few years of each other, just as the group started to experience a funding squeeze.
Google’s new Ireland boss Vanessa Hartley hears plenty of talk at corporate events about getting staff back to the office but she’s happy personally, and for her teams, to continue with the search giant’s hybrid model. Ciara O’Brien writes that she is more focused on the tech group’s harnessing of AI for the
As the world digests the scale of the victory for Donald Trump and the Republicans, Cliff Taylor tries to unravel what Trumpenomics 2.0 might mean for Ireland in his Smart Money column.
And in World of Work, we look at the share options in the workplace and the questions you should ask yourself and your employer before signing up.
Finally, as pressure grows for a dedicated Department of Infrastructure in the next government, John FitzGerald cautions that it will not be the panacea to Ireland’s deficits in housing, water and sewerage, energy and even hospitals that people think. Responsibility for climate was move from the Department of the Environment to Energy back in 2016, he recalls, and it is taken years to find its feet.
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