Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
RISING ENERGY COSTS are posing a threat to businesses and may impact on their viability, lobby group Ibec has warned.
The continuing increase in the cost of electricity and gas is significantly impacting on households and businesses, with Ibec saying that energy prices for business could rise up to four or five times.
Speaking to RTÉ’s News at One, Fergal O’Brien, Ibec’s Director of Lobbying, said that the continued increase in energy prices pose a “real challenge for many businesses to continue in operation”.
“For companies that are coming off kind of contracted rates and looking to the prices for the year ahead, they’re looking at about four to five times an increase of what they have been paying,” said O’Brien.
“For smaller companies, this could mean hundreds of thousands and tens of millions for larger companies.
“We are at a situation where government has previously identified the need to support households. It now needs to step in and support enterprises that are becoming extremely vulnerable to what is now an energy affordability crisis.”
In particular, O’Brien highlighted engineering firms and building material manufacturing as being particularly vulnerable due to their high energy usage and low margins.
He said that it may not make sense for some firms to run at full production levels and to instead have work hours reduced or shifts cut.
“Unfortunately, some of the sectors we’re talking about are probably sectors that are fairly low margin businesses where we have high scale production, whether it be in building materials or other related sectors, that will be energy intensive.
“A lot of companies in materials engineering for both the export and the domestic market, they could face significant viability challenges and for some of them, it may not make sense to have full production capacity at those energy costs.”
It comes as Ibec launched their pre-budget submission this morning, which totals in at just under €2 billion in spending and tax proposals.
In particular, the business lobby group is calling for “emergency supports” for businesses to offset the higher energy costs.
“In the short term, the focus of the business community will be on dealing with the impact of a rapid escalations in costs, particularly energy and labour costs,” said Ibec Head of National Policy and Chief Economist, Gerard Brady.
“This must be supported by a significant immediate package of emergency energy supports under the new EU State Aid framework along with a package of Budget Day incentives for energy efficiency and low carbon investment in 2023.”
These energy efficiency and low carbon investments include spending €45 million to help drive the decarbonisation of Irish industries and rolling out renewable energy.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Please stop mis-reporting. Hospitals are not treating 137 suspected Covid cases. There are 137 people waiting on test results. We know that a tiny percentage of these result in a confirmed case.
These people are not being treated for Covid!
Stop reporting this figure it is pointless!
@Joe:this sleight of hand reporting is why trust in MSN is an all time low, and is a form of fake news in itself.
@Joe: This kind of reporting bugs the crap out of me. What you actually have is hospitals treating 137 people for possibly a multitude of conditions, who also happen to have a fever or a cough and are therefore, out of an abundance of caution, correctly being tested for Covid. If all 137 cases had Covid, in addition to all the other “suspected” cases they have been reporting over the months, we would probably have over 100,000 confirmed cases by now. We don’t.
Likewise, “17 people confirmed to have Covid” in hospital does not translate to “17 people being treated FOR Covid”
And I’m sure I’m missing something but how does 348 open critical care beds less 285 currently occupied equal 31 available beds?
I have said it time and again, what is the actual endgame here? We have received no guidance from the government as to what they are actually hoping to achieve. We will never contain the virus, there may never be a vaccination. We had “flattened the curve” and our hospitals are not overwhelmed. The mismanagement of our hospitals’ capacity and capability during the time that we “bought” by staying locked down is scandalous. I personally don’t give a monkeys if my taxes are paying doctors and nurses to stand around idle 90% of the time, so long as they are there and rested and available to cope with ANY surge in ANY medical emergencies that may arise, Covid or otherwise. Not being asked to come home and then told to bugger off once the ICU gets quieter.
@InvaderSkoodge: Have you got a minute
Tell us everything you know
@Roger Dawson: He doesn’t know what the end game is!!
Very well in terms of hospital numbers
- 6 confirmed cases in ICU, down one from yesterdays 7
- 17 confirmed cases in hospital, down 5 from yesterday’s figure of 22
-All on the covid data hub
Where is Ireland right now when it comes to Covid-19? Sadly in chaos with the 3 stooges in charge. They can’t even be straight and honest at a time like this.
@LITTLEONE: which ones are Larry Curley and mo
@paul mccoy: oh have put Michael as mo.
Leo as Larry and eamon as curly.
@LITTLEONE: Can you back that up with stats, or is it just a weed head on a keyboard statement?
High testing, high asymptomatic cases, low hospitalisation, low deaths. Looks like a policy of herd immunity. I am ok with that, many are not – just please tell the truth.
@Tony Humphreys:
I’m okay with that too
However is there evidence to suggest that it works?
As far as I know, Sweden is still doing pretty badly after all these months of trying. Their head guy even said the method was a failure.
@Tony Humphreys: Herd immunity does not exist
@Tony Humphreys: calm down with the herd immunity talk on every thread Tony. It doesn’t exist with this virus and won’t ever without a viable vaccine.
@Darren Anthony Corr: their chief epidemiologist said they had made a mistake in june. This is when their cases were soaring and the antibody testing revealed low levels in the population.
- Their cases and deaths have plummeted since then and it has been widely covered (outside of Ireland) that they were now one of the better-performing countries in Europe.
- further studies into Tcells have shown that herd immunity cannot be measured by the level of antibodies in the population. Many people tested negative for antibodies while Covid positive. These people would have Tcells instead.
Tcells could explain the high rate of asymptomatic cases or why many only have mild symptoms. They would have developed Tcells after past coronaviruses.
@Anna:
That’s interesting and makes sense.
It makes so much sense actually that I’m not surprised Irish media isn’t reporting on it.
The figures are incomplete without knowing how many have recovered, and how many active cases there are in the country today.
Someone yesterday wrote that some of the cases being counted these days are cases that had the coronavirus previously and have already recovered, people whose symptoms were so mild that they didn’t realise they had it and now pose no danger to the public.
Is this true first of all, and if so, how many people in this category have been included in the numbers over the last fortnight.
@Garry Coll: Exactly. This is the real question here: how many of the new cases were asymptomatic (and therefore no transmission risk according to the WHO)?
Drinking to your Heart’s content in a Crowded Pub that sells Pizzas is now consider safe but ffs don’t let the over seventies outside the front gate
@frank_1916: I think the idea is to protect the over 70s
@Hector Son:
…….from those incapable of staying away from pubs. They are so much more vulnerable if they do catch it, our recent low death rate is evidence of that
@frank_1916: let them out as long as they realise that if they catch this virus they are very likely to die or become very sick.
Looking at the nicely coloured chart shows that from the end of July, people in Residential Care (the purple people) appear to account for a significant proportion of the cases.
The fact that deaths and hospitalisations since then has remained extremely low seems to mean that the virus is losing potency, or the treatment regime the elderly are now getting is much more effective.
Either way, it makes a nonsense of the governments alarmist rhetoric yesterday.
Its also worth noting that the cases from hospitality or travel related are miniscule, and that sporting activities don’t even merit a separate category.
Not liking Donnelly lately, as for mehole, not my cup of tea, pains me to say it but Leo was far better
@Mick Hannigan:
Agreed although Leo and Harris had very good PR spinmasters creating an image of cuteness and empathy.
Donnelly is an awful mister. Brutal at the job. Bet if he was still a Social Democrat, he would have all the answers and know all of the right thing to say.
Him and Martin are in above their heads with this one. Was a ridiculous idea to change government during the height of all this anyway. FG should have just been granted emergency powers for 6 months or so. As much as I hate to say it.
Incorrect reporting .. 1,775 did not die from covid. The number is at least 650 less than that .
“You can use statistics to prove anything”
Homer Simpson
‘In the past seven days, there have 55,129 Covid-19 tests completed with a positivity rate of 1.3%.’
The false positive rate is estimated to be somewhere between 1% and 2.5% which means the number of cases we are seeing is completely insignificant.
@mar: and the positivity rate has also dropped. It was 1.7% in the last 2 weeks and has dropped to gradually to where it is now
Where is Ireland ? In a Gum-drop house down Lollipop Lane !
I actually think that the charts alone show major cause for concern. If you look at the rising numbers at this point, most of the data points recorded is higher than the peak numbers in May. It took huge effort by everyone to bring the numbers down…. currently we are above most of them and rising.
@Tennyson: But what’s the significance of the numbers? Does the number of asymptomatic cases matter? Not according to WHO. So why are we being fed this pointless statistic every day?
Now, wouldn’t it give a more accurate picture of the state of the country in relation to COVID if the case statistics were broken down to show how many cases were symptomatic, how many showed no symptoms at all, how many recoveries from the diagnosed cases etc?
@FecklessBear: of course it would but that wouldn’t feed into the disaster narrative being pushed by the government with the help of the media..
@Tennyson: So you can’t factor in the testing numbers.
When the schools open it will run rampant. You either fully lockdown and eradicate it and shut boarders i.e. ban holidays or, this half assed version of something that we are doing now. We have to face it probably can never be contained. People are too lax, have lost patience with the measures required and are frustrated with the loss of activity.
Death with Covid, not ‘of’ Covid nor Covid confirmed.
Still no figures of remaining cases, keep on the fear factor.
Does anyone know how long it will take for the incidence rate number to decrease?
With our rate now at 27/100,000 I’m starting see many European countries remove us from their travel lists. Including Finland, Lithuania and Norway.
In many cases, such as Finland they aren’t even allowing 14 day quarantine. They stop you at the border.
Surely Ireland’s green list needs to be amended to reflect these changes.
Of the 5 reported deaths on 6th August, 4 were from April and June – so that’s 1 net for the preceding 24 hours.
Useless graphs.
@Michael O’ Carroll: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EftYiFxXYAEYRA6?format=jpg&name=large
Lithuania have removed us from their green list
Does this mean more countries can be added to the green list for travel, seeing as they said they were picking countries with equal or less cases per 100k than Ireland?
@Micheal Fitzpatrick:
Other countries don’t want us on their own travel lists because our infection rate is too high
In a terrible state about to enter a massive second wave that will make March and April look like a great time.
@Donal Cox: Logic in your statement please
@Donal Cox:
There is no second wave.
Second wave would imply that we eliminated the virus from our shores back in April which we did not.
There is no wave with covid, it’s just there and e need to get on with it.
Just reading some comments
To think the majority of people commenting spent 13 years doing maths at school, and they still cant make heads nor tails of statistical data is just worrying.
Here’s a better graph: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EftYiFxXYAEYRA6?format=jpg&name=large
have your say