In the middle of a housing crisis, fewer than 40 per cent of housing estates that have secured planning permission over the past four years are actually being built, construction consultants Mitchell McDermott note in a new report. And the outlook for student housing is even more grim if its projections are correct.
Eamon Waters has, however, secured permission for 189 student beds at Blackpitts in Dublin 8, from An Coimisiún Pleanála over some local opposition, writes Gordon Deegan, although they have sliced one floor and 28 bed spaces from his original six-storey plan.
While the housing crisis persists, the outlook for the wider economy seems brighter with ratings agency S&P indicating that Ireland’s creditworthiness could well be upgraded this year, leaving it just one notch shy of the AAA rating it enjoyed before the financial crash. Joe Brennan reports
Speaking of things rising, customers at VHI, Ireland’s largest health insurer, are facing higher premiums after it announced plans to add an average of 3 per cent to plan prices from March, with some family plans jumping by more than €400 on the back of it. Conor Pope has the details.
Aer Lingus has confirmed that it will shut its Manchester Airport base from March 31st. Barry O’Halloran reports that the airline’s 200 staff on site have now received confirmation of the news.
More job losses, this time at ecommerce giant Amazon, which is to shed another 16,000 staff worldwide on top of the 14,000 let go last October, notes Ciara O’Brien. Reports say that as many as 325 of its 6,000-plus Irish staff will be affected.
And retailers will be feeling blue as well as data from the Central Statistics Office show that Christmas trading fell flat with consumers remaining cautious. In volume terms, sales were down on November and on the same time last year, Ciara reports.
In Belfast, jurors in the trial of businessman Frank Cushnahan, accused of fraud in relation to Nama’s NI loan book, will start deliberating on a verdict today.
In technology, Ciara O’Brien wonders why the tech industry can reasonably expect consumers to buy into the concept of a smart home when companies arbitrarily discontinue smart features that buyers have paid for in household gadgets simply because they no longer seem profitable enough.
And we also report on an extraordinary open letter, published by Anthropic cofounder and CEO Dario Amodei warning that humanity needs to wake up to the potentially catastrophic risks posed by powerful AI systems in the years to come. Anthropic is one of the leading companies pushing to new frontiers in the sector.
And also throwing a sceptical eye at the future of AI, a leading Chinese maker of humanoid robots has said its latest machines are at most half as efficient as human workers, raising questions about the viability of deploying them to solve labour shortages and increase productivity.
Finally, in Inside Business, host Ciarán Hancock is joined in studio by Cliff Taylor to talk about the recent surge in the price of gold, which went past $5,300 an ounce on Wednesday, setting a new high. In January alone, the price has climbed by 22 per cent. So, who’s buying it? Why is it viewed as a safe investment? And what role has US president Donald Trump played in this price spike?
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