It is clear we need to resource and plan for a transition from the lockdown to a restart of the economy. This transition has to be phased, it has to be data-based, and it has to be very clearly communicated to people. Reviving the economy will take years, not just months.
As the crisis has unfolded, many young companies have had their term sheets yanked entirely or are being asked to agree to more punishing terms. The public sector – be it Dublin or Brussels – needs to step in to bridge the growing funding chasm.
The immediate crisis will obviously absorb political attention, but the longer term challenges posed by Europe’s lack of a coherent industrial policy will not go away. Indeed, it says much when even Margrethe Vestager wants strategic stakes in European companies to prevent hostile takeovers.
Keynes drew a clear distinction between speculating and investing. In effect, between fast action and patient waiting. Having endured early losses as a speculator, he gave it up as a fruitless pursuit and devoted himself to investing.
The Brexit project was launched in the context of a whole series of economic presumptions and assumptions. Many have now changed, many disappeared. Nobody involved with the original Brexit project could have envisaged an economic scenario anything like this.
For us, this has been a great opportunity to galvanise our team. Others, however, are seizing the chance to cut loose the dead weight on the payroll. Either way, workplace relations have utterly changed as a result of Covid-19.
If onshoring of manufacturing becomes a political priority around the world, it is hard to see how the Irish economy could come through such a process unscathed. Indeed, it will have a particularly malign effect on the Irish pharma sector.
While exploring the tech industry for the Mapping Multinationals series, Thomas Hubert had to adjust from the real world to understand the sheer volume of financial flows he was looking at. His reporting highlights the need for increased corporate transparency requirements.
The government is clueless as to what is happening on the balance sheets of Irish companies and how leveraged our private sector really is. As we rebuild the economy, we need to lower the level of financial leverage carried by the companies and support equity capital raising by the productive, non-financial firms.
I have been subject to the lockdown in China. I know from personal experience that it is easy for anxiety to overwhelm the best of us. But we have learned here that it is important to be positive, even if the economics and practicalities are challenging. Here are my experiences.
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