What was that about the end of “deflationary forces” in the eurozone? While the rest of the eurozone shows tentative signs of a self-sustaining increase in prices, Ireland’s economy returned to deflation in June, and economists at the local central bank are blaming the country’s reliance on trade with the UK, the Financial Times reported. While a weak pound has led to uncomfortably high inflation in the UK, its post-Brexit referendum depreciation has created the opposite problem in Ireland.

How indebted is Ireland? After a sobering Monday briefing from the country’s National Treasury Management Agency, let us count the ways. The country’s general government debt is €200bn — four times the level it was in 2007, before the crisis hit and the country’s banking sector collapsed, the NTMA said at the launch of its 2016 annual report and half-yearly update. That equates to €42,000 per person, compared to an average of just €24,000 among the EU’s 28 member states, the Financial Times reported.

Irish airline Ryanair is ready to deploy up to 30 planes in Italy to replace capacity lost if Alitalia collapses or is restructured but does not want to buy the struggling Italian carrier, Chief Executive Michael O'Leary said on Tuesday. Ryanair's view mirrors the stance of rival easyJet and British Airways owner International Airlines Group(IAG), which have both said they are interested in replacing Alitalia capacity but say they do not want to buy the airline.

Ireland’s central bank has become the latest regulator to call for greater scrutiny of how the $4tn exchange traded fund industry works and whether existing guidelines are adequate in light of the industry’s astronomical growth, the Financial Times reported. The Central Bank of Ireland, which oversees financial regulation, wants greater clarification on issues such as ownership and pricing, according to a discussion paper that flagged potential pitfalls in the way the instruments operate.

Ireland is home to the world’s fourth-largest “shadow banking” industry, with $2.2 trillion of nonbanking financial assets based in funds, special-purpose vehicles and other little-understood entities in Dublin’s IFSC, according to a report published on Tuesday, the Irish Times reported. The figure equates to almost eight times the size of the Irish economy, as measured by gross domestic product.

Creditors of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide will have to wait years to find out whether they will recover all that they are owed, as the cost of liquidating the institution that was established to wind down the failed lenders has soared to €222.6 million, the Irish Times reported. The liquidators of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) said on Friday that they held €1.919 billion of net cash as of February 6th, the fourth anniversary of the Government’s decision to liquidate the company.

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 precipitated the biggest reversal in real earnings in Ireland since the second World War, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), the Irish Times reported. The agency has collated data on the average earnings of industrial workers between 1938 and 2015, providing an insight into the shifting fortunes of workers here over the past 70 years. The recent financial crisis saw real weekly earnings drop by 4 per cent from €642 in 2008 to €616 in 2011.

Unions representing staff at Bus Éireann have said the current strike at the company will continue even if new talks aimed at finding a resolution to the dispute are convened. About 2,600 workers at the State-owned transport company will strike for a 12th consecutive day on Tuesday over plans by management at Bus Éireann to introduce new cost-saving measures and work practice reforms without the agreement of staff. The company argues the moves are essential if it is to stave off insolvency, the Irish Times reported.

The deficit at troubled Bus Éireann jumped sharply in the first two months of the year, rising 41 per cent to €2.2 million versus €1.5 million for the same period last year, new accounts show. The accounts reveal total revenues rose 3 per cent from €27.6 million to €28.4 million in the first eight weeks of the year due to a 14 per cent rise in the Public Service Obligation (PSO) subvention grant to €6.6 million, the Irish Times reported. Revenues from operations were flat at €21.7 million, with turnover from the company’s Expressway services down 5 per cent.

The number of owner-occupier mortgages at least three months in arrears fell 3.7 per cent during the final three months of 2016, marking the 13th consecutive quarterly decline, as the economy continued to improve and banks restructured their soured loans, the Irish Times reported. Some 54,269 home loans, or 7.4 per cent of a total of 736,894 Irish mortgages, valued at €100 billion, remained at least 90 days behind in repayments at the end of December, the Central Bank said on Thursday. The rate fell from 7.6 per cent from the previous quarter.