Archive for October 2023

The rate of inflation in the used car market was 3.3% in the period from July to the end of September, up from 0.9% in the previous quarter. The DoneDeal Car Price Index shows the annual rate of car price inflation is now at its lowest level since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, when…

The number of insurance and reinsurance businesses based in Ireland has fallen 39% since 2009, a new study has found. Life companies have dropped by 42% over the period and non-life firms by 29%, while the volume of re-insurers has decreased by 47%. On top of that the largest international non-life companies and one of…

The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin has announced details of the €1.17 billion in funding allocated to the department in Budget 2024. Measures include a €1.9m pilot initiative to support regional arts infrastructure to meet their building and equipment needs, increased funding for national sporting organisations and for high-performance…

Ireland will revise how it calculates its levy on banks after announcing plans to raise €200m from the measure next year, up from €87m in 2023, Finance Minister Michael McGrath said today. The levy previously raised a flat €150m a year after its introduction following the banking crisis a decade ago. But that fell last…

Some Budget 2024 measures came into force at midnight, after the Dáil voted to increase tobacco duties and also maintain the lower VAT rate on household energy bills. While the vote means pending excise increases on petrol and diesel have been deferred until next year, forecourt fuel prices increased overnight due to a hike in…

Some of the Budget 2024 measures came into force at midnight after the Dáil voted to increase tobacco duties and maintain the lower VAT rate on household energy bills. While the vote means pending excise increases on petrol and diesel have been deferred until next year, fuel prices at petrol and diesel pumps went up…

The number of people with private health insurance at the end of last year rose by 3% compared to a year earlier. 2.44m customers had health insurance policies at the end of December, representing 47.6% of the population. Total premium income fell slightly over the year and now stands at €2.93bn, as a result of…

Global natural gas demand is expected to experience slower growth to 2026 after peaking in mature markets such as Europe and North America in 2021, a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) said today. The IEA’s annual medium-term gas market outlook said global gas demand was on course to increase by an average of…

A new €250m grant scheme to help small and medium sized businesses with rising costs is set to be announced in today’s budget. The one-off scheme will offer payments to firms based on a percentage of the amount they pay in commercial rates. However, amounts will be capped, with the result that large firms will…

The Coalition party leaders met until the early hours of this morning to finalise most of the details of tomorrow’s Budget. Some items remain outstanding, however, and there may be further meetings today Ahead of the meeting, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the issues that still needed agreement included tax measures, supports for small businesses and…