Stay up to date with all our business news: sign up to our Business Today daily email news digest.
Many Irish businesses believe their rivals greenwash their operations but say their own environmental reporting is accurate, a new study shows. The EU will make environmental and social governance reporting mandatory next year, obliging companies to demonstrate how they are performing in these areas. A study published by lawyers McCann Fitzgerald shows that 63 per cent of businesses believe that actively reporting on these issues will attract investment to their organisations. Barry O’Halloran has the details.
Three months of not being very Twitter-active has been mind-opening. I’ve been on that platform for a long time, since January 2009. Ironically, Twitter sent me a “happy Twitter anniversary” message just at the point when I’ve realised how much I prefer not being anywhere near Twitter. Karlin Lillington enjoys her blissful silence.
After several quarters of higher-than-expected inflation, price growth in the second-hand car market has eased as cost-of-living pressures curb demand. A combination of undersupply and increased demand for used cars last year – driven by microchip shortages, Brexit and the outbreak of war in Ukraine – saw prices rise at an average quarterly rate of 4.7 per cent in the first nine months of 2022. However, the latest figures from car website DoneDeal suggests that price inflation slowed to just 1.4 per cent in the final quarter of last year, the lowest rate of inflation seen since the third quarter of 2019. Eoin Burke-Kennedy reports.
The EY Entrepreneur of the Year programme for this year has opened for nominations. Entrepreneurs from emerging, established and international businesses operating across all industry sectors across the island of Ireland are invited to apply for inclusion up to March 2nd. The theme for this year’s programme is The Art of Entrepreneurship. The overall award was won in 2022 by Martin McKay, founder and chief executive of Texthelp in Northern Ireland. The judging panel for this year’s awards will be chaired by recruitment entrepreneur Anne Heraty.
On most farms there’s a lot to do, especially with dairy herds, where keeping animals healthy and in good body condition is a priority. But vigilant monitoring takes time and with ongoing labour shortages farmers are increasingly turning to technology for help. For the technology to lighten their burden, however, it must be easy to use, and this was uppermost in Cormac McHugh’s mind when he set up Dairy Robotics to develop a plug-and-play herd health monitoring system that can be operational within a few hours, writes Olive Keogh.
Cantillon finds the Oireachtas finance committee deploying terse language over banker pay and that women look to be on the wrong side of the auto-enrolment pension provision plan.
As far as Android devices go, Nokia has done reasonably well in providing budget-friendly devices that don’t scrimp on the essentials. The company has carved out a niche for itself in the smartphone market, and has tried to do something similar in the tablet space. The T20, which was announced in late 2021, was a good opening salvo, but the display needed a tweak or two. So Nokia has taken that on board and come back with the T21 – a bit more expensive but with a better display that will handle everything from work documents and email to streaming video in your downtime. Ciara O’Brien has a look.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has had a hugely beneficial impact on business and society, playing a major part, for example, in the rapid development and roll-out of Covid-19 vaccines. Already pervasive in our lives, it is changing the way we live, work and pick our potential life partners, writes Frank Dillon. The downside of AI is that it has been harnessed as a distraction tool, making us unfocused, less patient and unable to delay gratification. It has also narrowed our minds, amplified prejudice, normalised narcissism and has led to a decline in individualism and curiosity.
The $10 billion investment that Microsoft is considering in San Francisco-based research outfit OpenAI looks set to become the defining deal for a new era of artificial intelligence. If the US software giant is right about the far-reaching implications of the technology, it could also trigger a realignment in the AI world as other tech groups race to stake out their place in the new field of generative AI. Richard Waters and Tabby Kinder report.
