Market pulse: Stuart Fitzgerald on the key trends in the Irish SME sector

Past experience shows that employment takes years to recover from a recession, with younger workers most severely affected – and Ireland is ill-prepared for this scenario.

Latin American’s young population is in a fundamentally better position to handle the health impact of the pandemic than richer countries with older populations. Meanwhile, Latin American countries are a far worse position to bear the cost of the crippling economic shutdowns, writes Paul O'Driscoll in El Salvador.

An enduring legacy of the coronavirus crisis may be the widespread new awareness of the extraordinarily fragile state of our world, how utterly we are at the mercy of nature, and how quickly everything we take for granted can unravel.

The state is currently saving our lives and our livelihoods. Our response to the state after this crisis cannot be to ask simultaneously for tax cuts and spending increases, with the gap paid for with someone else’s money. That way lies ruin.

Irish politicians are keen to mutualise debt, but are less keen regarding a common taxation policy. The economic problems emerging from Italy could have profound consequences for the future of European policy.

Following on from the recent debate between Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin surrounding proposed 100-year leases for social housing, Sinn Féin's spokesperson on housing Eoin Ó Broin publishes a full costing for the measure – and maintains that it would not deliver value.

The latest quarterly economic statistics give a partial view of what has happened to the Chinese economy through the Covid-19 crisis – and what is yet to come.

RTÉ’s best all-round interviewer, it is rare for Seán O’Rourke to be overly combative, rarer still for him to be rude. When required though, his capacity to be mentally a few steps ahead means that he normally eases his way through spurious nonsense, gently disrobing the emperor or empress.

As a food and drinks business specialist with ifac and a council member of the Ireland China Business Association, Lorcan Bannon has spent some time speaking with industry experts in China to get a perspective on what Irish food and drinks businesses can expect post the initial surge of Covid-19.

As oil prices continue to trend down, the markets are signalling lack of conviction in the post-Covid-19 recovery and heightened doubts about the duration of the Covid-19-related restrictions on economic activity.