Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Breakfast Business with Enterprise Ireland on Newstalk.
Chapter 2: What should you include in your post-Christmas financial to-do list?
Now, to take a look first off at the papers, Fiona Redden in the Irish Times has what she calls a post Christmas to do list. She says, move your savings, call your health insurer and review your mortgage.
Now, I have to tell you, my aunt used to say to me before that on the 2nd of January, what she would do is she would take time out to go and count her money and then she would decide what she needed to do with the money that she didn't need. And it sounds like Fiona Redden has a list ready to go for her.
Now, in the examiner, we see that the Excel recruitment salary guide for 2026 is out and it shows that 81% of candidates want a mix of office-based and remote work. Now, interestingly, when I came in to Shane Coleman on News Talk Business yesterday with one of the main stories that had broken in the morning,
There was an IBEC study out primarily saying that one of the top three concerns that businesses have today in Ireland and looking into 2026 is indeed hybrid working. So there is a rhyming there between the two. Now, also, 67% of businesses had problems recruiting staff in 2025. And one can understand that since the unemployment rate is as low as it is.
So textbook economics would tell you that full employment is when the economy has unemployment of 4%. Now we're at round about 4.5%. So therefore, when it comes to looking at where to find people, as that study says, then the talent pool is a little bit tight. And in addition, of course, we do have a rising population for the past four years in a row.
the Irish population has grown by 100,000 people. And if you look at the statistics around workers, one in five people who are in the Irish workforce today is actually international. So we can see how when you've got a low unemployment rate and you've got a growing population, that is how there is a confluence there about where people are joining the workforce from.
And then also in that piece, it mentioned that 41% of people said they had lost staff over the past six months. Now, I was thinking about that too. Of course, that can happen because people leave the workforce and they may, of course, move to another job or there can be what we call organic shortages from that perspective.
But the other side of things as well is digital labour, of course, is that now with the rise of AI and with particularly even before that, the rise of automation, it can also be the case that we have got a situation where there are more and more jobs being done now by technology.
Now, always, of course, the other side of that is that we do need people to program the technology and to figure out how to put generative and agentic AI and so on in place. But it's just interesting that that is currently what is dominating that particular study. As I say, that piece was in the examiner. Now, in addition as well, there's two stories breaking here this morning.
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