The Juggle: the issues facing women with young children when balancing childcare and their careers
It's an age-old problem in Ireland with no solution yet in sight. Margaret Ward writes about Work issues each week for the Irish Times as well as running her own consultancy business Clear Eye and she's written a series of articles on the Juggle in recent weeks.
Aideen Finnegan is an audio producer with The Irish Times and the host of the Better with Money podcast. She has two young children, and you'll hear her tell host Ciarán Hancock about the daily grind she and her husband face to get their kids to creche and school while also commuting to work to earn a living.
Both of them offer their clear views on what Government and employers need to do to help young mothers balance their responsibilities at home and in the workplace.
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Also in this episode of Inside Business, Donald Trump recently got his Big Beautiful Act through Congress, which allows for major cuts in taxation while boosting spending in key areas to support his policies. It will also involve cuts in Medicaid and other assistance offered to the most vulnerable in the US.
Keith Duggan joins host Ciarán on the line from Washington to discuss this and the latest developments in Trump's tariff threats.
Produced by John Casey with JJ Vernon on sound.
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Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
The future of pocket money? NestiFi lets families invest together for kids
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Performance expectations are based on a 7.2 per cent average annual return, which Dennehy says is the approximate historical average (adjusted for inflation) of the S&P 500 over the past 30 years. NestiFi does not need a banking licence as it does not hold any client money. Investments are made through licensed/regulated intermediaries such as brokers, credit unions and brokerage-as-a-service providers. 'NestiFi rethinks investing through the lens of family and collaboration,' he says, adding that it is designed to support families in several different ways, whether that's to save for college fees, give gifts of digital assets or introduce children to the concept of financial literacy. [ Ireland 'actively hindering its citizens from building wealth and securing their future' Opens in new window ] 'The platform supports traditional investments such as stocks and ETFs as well as blockchain-powered assets like stablecoins and tokenised real-world assets,' Dennehy says. 'Our AI adviser 'Sebastian' provides personalised financial guidance for each user, and children can earn rewards by completing interactive lessons. For example, if they spend X number of hours learning on the app, they'll get a voucher for the same amount of time for Disney Plus.' NestiFi is not Dennehy's first innovation rodeo. A graduate of the University of Galway, where he studied IT, Dennehy has been involved with multiple start-ups as founder/co-founder, including digital payments infrastructure company, Aid:Tech, which was the overall winner of The Irish Times Innovation Awards in 2018. NestiFi is his latest venture, and the company currently employs four people. 'I've spent the last decade building technology at the intersection of trust, transparency and financial inclusion, and it struck me that families have no modern tools with which to build wealth together because most investment apps are built for individuals, not families,' Dennehy says. 'I felt the time had come to replace siloed banking apps and old-school custodial accounts with a next-gen platform that would bring together traditional investing, blockchain assets and family-based financial literacy in one seamless experience,' he adds. Dennehy says the company's initial target market will be the US, where an $84 trillion (€75.5 trillion) intergenerational wealth transfer is already under way. Europe will follow, including Ireland, where Dennehy says a substantial wealth transfer will also take place over the next 20 years. Families are a key market for NestiFi, but so are credit unions, financial advisers, financial institutions and fintechs interested in offering NestiFi as a value-added service to their clients. Investment in the business to date is running at about €250,000, and the company is currently raising a seed round of €1.5 million. A private beta launch is slated for the third quarter, with a full roll-out in the US to follow later this year. 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As a serial entrepreneur, Dennehy knows his way around the start-up ecosystem. However, he says that clearer guidance and faster turnaround times within the grants system would make a massive difference to how fast a company can develop. 'Often, the paperwork is intense, and the decision timelines are too slow. If there were more founder-first grant supports with less admin and more mentorship built in, I think we'd see even more global-scale companies emerge from Ireland,' he says. 'Too often, start-ups are forced to chase funding instead of focusing on customers and product. There is a lot of goodwill and some excellent people in the ecosystem, but I think there's still a gap between ambition and execution. [ Google, CeADAR to partner on deal to support AI in Irish business Opens in new window ] 'What I'd truly love to see would be a founder-led innovation hub, something agile with fast access to capital, technical expertise, and hands-on support for international expansion. We need to move away from treating grants as red-tape-heavy lifelines and instead use them as strategic fuel to help early-stage teams build, test and scale faster,' Dennehy says. Are you aware of a recent innovation or innovator we should feature in this column? Email us at innovation@
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Corporation tax take defies tariff fears even as Apple bows to Trump
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Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
We all need to consume less if we are to save our environment from catastrophe
The focus on solving the triple crises of climate change , biodiversity loss and pollution is often on how to reduce harmful emissions by reaching targets for agriculture, transport and energy use. According to the latest Environmental Protection Agency report , Ireland will only achieve a reduction of 23 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 instead of the national target of 51 per cent with current measures. But what if we broadened our focus and added other ways to dealing with these crises? What if we took a sharper look at consumption patterns and resource use as a way of holding on to existing value rather than just focusing on reducing emissions from what is already used and sometimes even wasted? Experts in organisations such as the Ellen Macarthur Foundation have long argued that energy efficiency and switching to renewable energies will only address 55 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. How we design, make and use products, materials and food is the other 45 per cent of the solution. If you take this wider view of sustainability , there are things we can all do more of to reduce pollution, waste and emissions too. So rather than praising yourself for being a good recycler, consider how you can reuse stuff, repair stuff and rent stuff rather than always opting to buy new stuff. READ MORE This third strand of global efforts to living more sustainably often goes under the radar. And although repair cafes, tool and toy libraries and online vintage clothes marketplaces have become more popular, it's the scaling up of these efforts across manufacturing and food production that will really have the most impact. For this to happen, businesses need to embrace the somewhat misunderstood concept of circularity – where resources and materials are kept in circulation for as long as possible at their highest value, creating closed and open loops of production. The European Commission is desperately trying to build momentum around the circular economy, albeit with the new stamp of competitiveness highlighted. During EU Green Week 2025 in Brussels, policymakers reiterated how geopolitical tensions are jeopardising global supply chains for rare and critical earth materials essential for the digitalisation of production processes across healthcare, construction, food and manufacturing. So, for Europe to remain competitive, businesses must find ways to source some of these materials from products already in circulation here. As one Brussels policymaker put it, Europe might not have the raw materials but we are world leaders in recycling. The European Commission now wants member states to source 25 per of rare and critical metals from so-called urban mining – aka taking them out of old cars, electronic and electrical items to reuse as secondary materials for new products. [ The life of microplastic: how fragments move through plants, insects, animals – and you Opens in new window ] But it's not all about rare and critical raw materials. It's also about finding new uses for byproducts in food production that go to waste (think the once neglected whey which is now central to many protein products). It's about taking out valuable construction materials like steel from building sites for reuse in other sites. And it's about creating new products like insulation panels from recycled textiles. Circular economy entrepreneurs are excited about the prospects of building a new strand to business where people, profit and planet can work in harmony but they are also cognisant that financial incentives and regulations which promote a market for secondary materials are urgently needed. The backdrop to all of this is the European Circular Economy Act – expected to be introduced in the second half of 2026 when Ireland holds the European presidency. This Act needs to include financial incentives (eg lower VAT on products with recycled content, recertification schemes for reused materials) to help companies take risks to create new uses for things they would have previously thrown out. Promoting a marketplace for second-hand building materials and building more durable products which can be repaired, reused, refurbished and remanufactured has to be the way forward if we want to live within planetary boundaries. The elephant in the room is cheap imports of virgin materials from outside the EU. To create a level playing field for 'ecopreneurs' in Europe, some form of tariffs will have to be imposed on these cheap imports so that recycled plastics and recycled textile plants in places like the Netherlands and Sweden can survive or even thrive. Turning trash to treasure has never been more important if we want to continue to have the products we need whilst not polluting our planet and helping reduce harmful emissions at the same time. Sylvia Thompson was one of 30 journalists from EU member states to attend EU Green Week 2025 in Brussels in June
