Austin Hughes

Business services, financial services also improving, but transport, tourism and leisure down as they have been for the last couple of months.

So a mixed bag.

But in general, the economy here continues to do well.

Yeah, like most economies now, we tend to talk an awful lot about manufacturing, but services is the lion's share of activity and employment, really critical in that regard.

Yeah, this is quite an interesting one.

Now, Tesco UK raised its profit outlook and said that price cuts on six and a half thousand items, that average nine percent had seen them have a strong first half of their year.

And in that regard, they're raising their profit outlook.

The Tesco Ireland CEO, Geoff Byrne, also said they had a strong performance in the first half.

Now, he cites sales growth of 4.8% that I assume is like for like.

Cantor is talking about overall spending in the grocery market by 6%.

He also, the Irish CEO, also cites strong food sales, but it's not clear whether that is largely due to...

higher prices rather than the fact that we're all eating more.

I suspect the former.

I think there will be rabbits.

But according to Cliff Taylor in the paper this morning, the government hasn't set aside sufficient or any money for an income tax package.

Now, when wages rise, people pay a higher amount of income and taxes.

So it's not really a tax cut.

And the article in the Irish Times cites central bank research that says we haven't got that much.

They haven't been giveaways.

They've been givebacks that allow the government.