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Here's everything you need to know about business this week

Everyone was talking about allergic non-workers, Ireland’s most-hated company and a Greek tragedy.

Hong Kong Rat Race AP Photo / Vincent Yu AP Photo / Vincent Yu / Vincent Yu

EVERY WEEKEND, TheJournal.ie gives its readers the chance to put their feet up and take a look back at all the goings-on from the world of business.

Once again it’s time to delve deep inside The Briefcase for the important – and sometimes less-important – financial news that has come out this working week:

Michael Noonan thinks some people are ‘allergic to work’. The Finance Minister made the comments at a business lunch in Kilkenny as he promised that soon everybody in Ireland who wanted a job would be in work. But the talk didn’t go down too well, with Noonan and his government colleagues accused of having “disdain” for the poor

Belgium EU Ecofin AP Photo / Geert Vanden Wijngaert AP Photo / Geert Vanden Wijngaert / Geert Vanden Wijngaert

No prizes for guessing Ireland’s least-favourite company. It was the much-hated semi-state, Irish Water, according to the latest annual survey from the Reputations Agency. That put it below even the bailed-out Bank of Ireland and AIB on the list of popular brands, which was topped this year by Google

Greece found money for the IMF by apparently not paying its people. The debt-laden country made its latest €200 million interest payment to one of its bailout lenders amid claims the anti-austerity Syriza government was stalling on payments for some workers and suppliers as repayment deadlines continued to loom

Greek Animated GIF Giphy Giphy

Newspapers are not a good business to be in. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation shed over half its profits at the start of the year as its news business increasingly acts as a drag. The drop in ad revenue is hardly surprising as more and more readers migrate to other news sources, although local title the Sunday Business Post has at least managed to trim its losses since it emerged from examinership

Rupert Murdoch - News Corpse Surian Soosay Surian Soosay

Germany was left with no trains… or cash. Strike action hit both the national railway network, Deutsche Bahn, and armoured car workers, putting the brakes on both the country’s trains and its ready supply of cash

The Anglo Avenger struck again. Mayo developer Joe McNamara, who earned the nickname for his high-profile protests against the toxic Anglo Irish Bank, unveiled his latest work – a structure outside the offices of London Mayor Boris Johnson. McNamara has been working in the UK and the project was an apparent dig at politicians acting as a “sword through the heart of Britain”

Ango Avenger

One of Dublin’s swankiest nightspots was put up for sale. The Dawson building, on the capital’s Dawson Street, is on the market with a guide price of €15 million. The complex also includes a guesthouse, restaurant and spa – in case you’ve got that kind of cash lying around

Bank of Ireland salaries were “relatively generous” before the crisis. That’s according to the bank’s CEO, Richie Boucher, who this week told the banking inquiry the bailed-out lender could never fully repay taxpayers “in moral terms” so it was trying to “do it in financial terms” instead

Money Animated GIF Giphy Giphy

And one for the road…

Everyone knows drugs – alcohol included – make you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily think were a good idea. Like, say, telling your boss at the work Christmas party what you’ve always really thought about him/her.

But some actions are less-easily explained away as a moment of intoxicated madness – for example, running naked through the streets before trying to have sex with a tree.

That was among the acts credited to an increasingly-popular designer drug, Flakka, as this video shows:

Associated Press / YouTube

MORE: Have a look at our business wraps from previous weeks >

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3 Comments
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    Mute PVD
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    Jan 15th 2018, 6:35 AM

    Welcome to the reality of supporting some one with a difference here , talk to parents and siblings about how we have to fight for everything.

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    Mute Clare Sharkey
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    Jan 15th 2018, 8:39 AM

    Fair play to the foster carers for contacting the Ombudsman and therefore going up against Tusla and the HSE. Not a decision taken lightly. There is a bullying mentality when you go against these agencies. Hopefully now the child and her family will get the supports they need. It’s disgraceful that the family had to put themselves through the stress and pressure to get the outcome.

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    Mute Lorraine Roche
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    Jan 15th 2018, 9:57 AM

    @Clare Sharkey: Sad thing is that TUSLA are in the process of moving the child into a residential type setting and removing her from the wonderful foster family. Wouldn’t it be much easier to put the supports in place and leave her with the loving foster family.

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    Mute Clare Sharkey
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    Jan 15th 2018, 10:37 AM

    @Lorraine Roche: its a power struggle. Easier to blame foster carers than themselves.

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    Mute Lorraine Roche
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    Jan 15th 2018, 8:37 AM

    It’s not only children with disabilities who are in care the system is failing it’s children with disabilities full stop. Your child with a disability is accepted into a service-8-18 disability service- they then have to go on waiting lists within that service for Speech& Language, Occupational Therapy, Psychologist etc…. Services are badly organised and seriously under resourced.

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    Mute Are roo from Cork
    Favourite Are roo from Cork
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    Jan 15th 2018, 6:38 AM

    A certain spectacle Senator with his “human rights activists” friends will be working tirelessly on this one.

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    Mute Are roo from Cork
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    Jan 15th 2018, 6:43 AM

    “bespectacled

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    Mute Bobby Connolly
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    Jan 15th 2018, 9:10 AM

    @Are roo from Cork: think you were right first time.

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    Mute Pounamustone
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    Jan 15th 2018, 7:02 AM

    Abandoned at birth !!!!!????

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    Mute David Grey
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    Jan 15th 2018, 1:59 PM

    The poor Girl can expect a lifetime of neglect by the state, funding is ridiculously low in the intellectual disability area, from childhood right through to Adult services!
    The Government should take control of all services and streamline while increasing funding – the current system with dozens of organisations with CEO’s on mainly over €100k with generous expenses is putting tax money into the wrong hands instead of into the frontline where conditions have plummeted and staff under severe pressure are leaving disillusioned!
    Put the money where it matters and strip away the red tape to give those with disabilities the services they deserve- too much of a gravy train at present!

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    Mute Misanthrope
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    Jan 15th 2018, 2:18 PM

    @David Grey: leo will be in shortly saying how “it shouldn’t be like this”

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