The future of US president Donald Trump’s tariff policy is now in the hands of the country’s supreme court, after the lower appeals court ruled on Friday that most of his levies are illegal.
The president has indicated that the decision will be appealed and on Sunday US trade representative, Jameson Greer, said that despite the decision the US continued in negotiations with other countries on trade deals.
Only 7,384 Irish housing commencement notices were issued by builders in the first seven months of the year, reports Eoin Burke-Kennedy. This, he says, is roughly a fifth of the 35,000 notices issued for the same period last year and less than half the number issued for the same period in 2023, pointing to major slowdown in housing delivery.
Based on the latest Department of Housing commencement data, the Government is unlikely to reach its housing target of building 41,000 homes this year.
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Columnist Pilita Clark spares a thought for bosses from the Gen-Z generation that will be competing increasingly with AI robots. She says that older workers who may find themselves reporting a twenty-something boss should, rather than feeling resentful or miffed, be pleased to see them in a job at all.
We are now witnessing a most peculiar twist of history. Two decades ago, western leaders thought China was becoming more “American”, in the sense of adopting free market, capitalist principles. Now it is the US that looks more Chinese. Future historians may yet chuckle at the irony — or weep at the future cost, writes Gillian Tett.
In our Business Opinion slot, Kieran Daly, cofounder of medical technology company HealthBeacon, says Ireland’s digital health strategy talks about empowering patients but, in practice, we are still designing systems around clinics, not people. Unless that changes, and quickly, he argues, we risk missing the point of digital care entirely.
“Like many others in my family, my parents worked in a bank. They were meticulous in their own accounting, whereas I am utterly shambolic. They always tried to save, whereas I have not made much of an attempt at all. By the same token, though, I am also not much of a profligate spender,” author Wendy Erskine tells Me & My Money.
Why is the delivery of vital infrastructure so slow in Ireland?
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