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The Labour Court is to convene virtual case hearings for the first time from 2 June in order to comply with public health guidelines on the coronavirus. The majority of currently scheduled hearings involve industrial relations matters and will be heard in private. However, in a statement, the Labour Court says it is satisfied that…

The Central Statistics Office has found that a majority of companies have continued to trade through the Covid-19 pandemic.   In the second of the CSO’s new Covid-19 business surveys, conducted in the week beginning May 3, 76% of companies which responded said they were continuing to trade.  But 23.9% indicated they had ceased trading…

The number of people receiving the Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment has fallen slightly by 5,000 to 584,600 over the last week, new figures show.  Of those, 7,000 are receiving the €350 weekly payment for the first time.   A further 214,700 people were receiving Jobseekers’ Benefit of €203 a week at the end of April. …

European passenger car sales slumped in April as the first full month with restrictions imposed to contain the coronavirus pandemic across the continent dragged sales to a record drop, data showed today.  In April, new car registrations dropped by 78.3% to 292,182 vehicles in the European Union, Britain and the European Free Trade Association countries. This…

France and Germany have agreed to propose creating a €500 billion Recovery Fund that would offer grants to European member states and regions hit hardest by the coronavirus crisis. In what French President Emmanuel Macron said was a “major step forward”, the two countries said they were also proposing to allow the European Commission to…

The coronavirus-hit euro zone economy probably will not return to its pre-pandemic levels until next year at the earliest, the European Central Bank’s chief economist said today. But Philip Lane said that the ECB was prepared to tweak its tools if needed.   “From today’s perspective, it looks in any case unlikely that economic activity…

31% of consumers are more likely to continue shopping online for clothes, toys and electronic goods after Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted, a survey conducted by Banking & Payment Federation Ireland shows. But one in five of those consumers who have shopped online for groceries, hardware and DIY or newspapers and magazines are less likely…

Dublin-based legal firm McCann Fitzgerald last year received €1.54m in legal fees from the National Asset Management Agency. That is according to new figures provided by the Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe in a written Dáil reply to Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett. In the figures provided by Mr Donohoe, NAMA last year…

New figures from the Central Statistics Office show that residential property prices increased by 1% nationally in the year to March.  The CSO said this compares with an increase of 1% in the year to February and an increase of 3.8% the same time last year. Today’s figures lag a coronavirus-related collapse in housing transactions.…

Irish banks expect the “biggest ever decrease” in the demand for mortgages and consumer loans as a result of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.  That is one of the results from analysis of the quarterly Bank Lending Survey published by the Central Bank today.  The Central Bank said the fall in demand will be…