Economy

An unexplained £720,000 handout:

By early this year Hammond was really no further down the road than when the IBI first took its shareholding. With three directors on the board, Richard Cooper, Denis Harvey Kelly and Kevin Wylie, and having also supplied Hammonds' managing direcctor, Dominic Murphy, the Investment Bank of Ireland was really up to its neck in Hammond. When TMG approached it early this year with a view to discussing a takeover, the bank grasped the opportunity to get out.

In introducing a £5 weekkly job subsidy for everybody employed in the textile and shoe industry, George Colley is really only fiddling about with a much larger prooblem in an ad hoc manner tyypical of most politicians of all shades. Of course he had been I put up to this by the British Government with its now two-year-old £20 a week temmporary employment subsidy.

Wave power may yet meet Ireland's energy needs, and we may not need nuclear power after all.

The recent oil discovery has heightened expectations of a major find

How the Post office Workers Union came to reject a deal which has been in the making for ten years

With five months still to run, the 1978 National Wage Agreement is looking a bit tired. And neither the susspension from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions of one union - the Autoomobile Union (AGEMOU) - which, by its own proud admission has breached the agreement many times over, nor the settlement of a spate of autumn strikes are likely to give it second wind.

THIS month Magill begins a new Consumer Affair's department. Each month we will examine some aspect of the consumer market in Ireland. We begin this month by examining the kind of choice and value for money the shopper can expect when buying groceries in Dublin.

OLD JURY'S : ONE of the biggest property coups was pulled off this year by, of all people, the Pembroke Estate. This latter of. course is best known for its ground rerit activities but in the last three years has become involved in property developpment, possibily because of the large number of people taking advantage of their Legal right to buyout their own ground landlord.

LIKE any institution, the Stock Exchange has rules and regulations which govern the behaviour of its members and those companies quoted on it. Unlike in the USA where the Market is governed by a statutory body, the Securities and Exchange Commission, markets in these islands are supervised by self-regulatory bodies like the Quotation's Committee and Takeover Panel. The decisions of these bodies sometimes seem arbitary and unfortunnately are not readily amenable to any judicial appeal machinery.

Land: PROBABLY the smartest investment in the years before Ireland joined the European Economic Community was farm land. Since 1973, and especially in the last two years the price of agricultural land has soared than 150 percent.