Shane Nolan: from Google to Leinster Rugby

Shane Nolan seems comfortable with change. The man who was in his playing days a rugby prop looks closer in stature these days to a full back. So maybe it shouldn’t have come as any great surprise when he made the leap from the senior executive ranks of the Irish business of search engine giant Google to the hot seat at Leinster Rugby, writes Dominic Coyle in our Interview of the Week.
It’s already proving challenging to produce more green electricity, especially with new wind farms facing planning obstacles. However, the huge increase in electricity demand from data centres makes it harder to achieve overall reductions in emissions from electricity generation, writes John FitzGerald in his weekly column. We need to increase the capacity of the generation system and of the grid, given the extra demand, while at the same time trying to replace old fossil fuel plants. That’s a big job and isn’t easy to achieve.
Kingspan, a business founded by Eugene Murtagh almost 60 years ago in a yard behind his family pub in Kingscourt, Co Cavan, and now led by is son Gene, is mentioned 631 times in the final report on the Grenfell fire in London which killed 72 people, writes Joe Brennan in Agenda.
The Irish group may have been unaware contractors on the Grenfell Tower used its K15 panels for a small part of the insulation when there were supply problems with Celotex’s boards, the product specified by those responsible for the refurbishment.
But the inquiry heard that K15 passed a fire safety test in 2005 when it was placed behind non-combustible cladding. That meant the product should only have been used in high-rise buildings with this type of tested cladding. However, it was marketed for general use on high-rises.
Is the Government’s budget policy pushing up prices? This is the argument put forward by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (Ifac), the budget watchdog, in its latest report. Quoting Central Bank research, it says that by adding to demand in the economy, Government policy has pushed up prices and is, in effect, costing the average household €1,000 a year. Cliff Taylor sifts the evidence.
It is an understatement to say modern Germany’s economy is dependent on its automobile industry. Some claim the automobile industry is the German economy. With annual sales of around €500 billion, the big auto companies contribute every fifth tax euro to Germany’s coffers and, in some regions, employ up to eight per cent of the local workforce. Derek Scally reports from Berlin on the crisis of confidence hitting VW and, by extension, the country as a whole.
For many employers the wellbeing and contentment of their staff has become a far greater priority since the pandemic. One asset manager is betting those initiatives will produce financial gains.
US research firm Irrational Capital has created a novel approach to stock picking that largely abandons traditional financial metrics in favour of a system designed to select companies based on how happy their workers are. Will Schmitt reports.
Stay up to date with all our business news: sign up to our Business Today daily email news digest. If you’d like to read more about the issues that affect your finances try signing up to On the Money, the weekly newsletter from our personal finance team, which will be issued every Friday to Irish Times subscribers.