Re-opening retail, struggling squeezed middle and a call for Varadkar to apologise

Temperature checks for staff and customers, mandatory staff Covid-19 testing, and no price promotions to prevent "surge consumption" are among measures being mulled over by retailers as they plan for eventual reopening of non-essential outlets. Mark Paul reports.

In this week's Agenda feature, Mark writes that the Irish retail sector is braced for a winter of discontent, where up to 40 per cent of stores could go bust without intervention from the Government.

One in eight Irish consumers have no way of financing a €1,000 hit to their income, a survey assessing the capacity of consumers to weather the financial storm stemming from the Covid-19 crisis has found. Eoin Burke-Kennedy reports.

Irish companies hit by the Covid-19 crisis face the prospect of auditors issuing qualified opinions on their annual accounts, writes Joe Brennan.

Rents in the State rise at slowest rate in six years

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Coronavirus: Beware politics over science in reopening economy

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China’s GDP contracts for first time in decades on Covid-19

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Coronavirus: Central Bank warns of ‘amplified shock’ to SMEs

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Barry O'Halloran reports on a new Irish business aims to earn €2 million over the next two years from auctioning aircraft online.

In his Caveat column Mark Paul reckons Taoiseach Leo Varadkar owes an apology to Keelings for the Government's botched handling of the faux drama over the Bulgarian fruit pickers.

Elsewhere, economist John FitzGerald touches on the forgotten lessons of the Spanish flu pandemic, while Olive Keogh advises that overdoing video meetings, especially when a phone call or an email would suffice, is a quick way of tiring people out.

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