As published in the Sudnay Business Post, August 2018. Employment disputes are a fact of life – people being people, tensions inevitably arise in the workplace and these can cause significant difficulties for employers and employees alike. In any business, there will always be a (hopefully limited) cohort of individuals whom the employer will not […]

Partner Simon O’Neill has been working closely with Community Finance Ireland to introduce Ireland’s first Shariah compliant financing product Developed for Community Finance Ireland (CFI), An Irish charity dedicated to providing loans to community groups which has extended an excess of EUR90 million (US$105.41 million) to over 500 organizations, has added a Shariah compliant financing […]

As published in the Sunday Business Post, 5th August 2018. Ireland, like many of our EU neighbours, includes among its myriad of immigration schemes a residence-by-investment programme for high net worth individuals. The Immigrant Investor Programme (IIP) was only introduced in 2012 and is still in its infancy. As it grows and expands, it learns. […]

The European Union (Planning and Development)(Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2018 will come into operation on 1 September 2018. They seek to transpose EIA Directive 2014/52/EU and to give further effect to the 2011 Directive.  They do so by way of extensive amendments to existing planning legislation and a timely consolidation of the legislation would be […]

The Employment Permits Section of the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation is currently experiencing a backlog of employment permit applications and has apologised to customers experiencing difficulties as a result of the delays. The current processing times for standard Employment Permit applications is over thirteen weeks, up from the typical six to eight weeks, […]

As published in the Sunday Business Post, July 2018. The ongoing dispute within the Kilkenny Group has attracted a lot of coverage in recent months. It appears that the parties now intend to allow the courts to resolve the dispute, recent talks apparently having broken down. The dispute arises from the dismissal of the chief […]

Sustainable Finance: Converging Responsible Finance, ESG, Ethical Finance and Green Finance to deliver real impact. As published by the Responsible Finance and Investment Foundation (RFI) on 10th July 2018: Climate change and sustainability are not terms commonly associated with financial services. That is set to change following the release of the EU High Level Expert […]

Communications and data infrastructure are intended to be classified as strategic infrastructure development for the purposes of the Planning and Development Acts 2000 to 2017 (‘the PDA’). Under amendments to be introduced by means of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2016 (‘the 2016 Bill), which was passed by the Seanad on 13 June 2018, […]

In as little as 12 months, Bitcoin has gone from a little known alternative form of e-money to the next “must have asset”. However, some prominent investors are now saying it was a fad whose bubble has burst before it even got going. In my opinion, the reality could not be more different, with cryptocurrency […]

As published in The Times, June 2018. The Law Society of Ireland has urged the government to reduce taxes for entrepreneurs and for people buying and selling shares. In its pre-budget submission, the organisation said that the cap on so-called entrepreneurs relief should be raised. The measure, which was introduced several years ago, allows people […]