A new redundancy payment scheme for Irish workers laid off because of Covid-19 health restrictions has opened for applications, the Irish Times reported. The Redundancy Payments (Amendment) Act 2022 will allow workers who were made redundant due to public-health restrictions between March 13th, 2020, and January 31st, 2022, to apply for the payment, which will be up to €2,268 tax-free. Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said that the scheme means that workers made redundant “to protect public health during the pandemic will not be out of pocket for the period they were laid off”.

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has lifted its objection to Limerick-based aircraft lessor Nordic Aviation Capital’s bankruptcy plan, the Independent reported. Nordic Aviation Capital (NAC) has been seeking to get out from under $6.3bn (€5.8bn) of debt by handing it to lenders. The IRS said in a filing on April 15 that it was withdrawing its objection to the bankruptcy plan on the condition that the lenders pay any administrative claims without the IRS having to file a request for them. The IRS had raised a last-minute objection to the plan last week on technical grounds.

Ireland’s central bank is weighing whether to reinstate a capital buffer for banks it removed during the pandemic, amid a worsening economic outlook driven by the war in Ukraine, Bloomberg News reported. The central bank expected to rebuild the counter-cyclical capital buffer (CCyB) “gradually” through 2022 given the Irish economic outlook, it said in November. However in its latest decision on the buffer published on March 24 but not publicized until now, it warned there is “considerable uncertainty” around the economic outlook. The buffer remains at 0%.

Ulster Bank said on Wednesday that it has formally begun writing to groups of current and deposit account customers in Ireland to give them six months’ notice to move their business to another provider and close their accounts, the Irish Times reported. The bank said it is sending out letters and emails on a phased basis to different groups of customers “to help to facilitate orderly account switching and new account opening across the industry and to avoid a single closure date for customers and the industry”.

Annual inflation in Ireland neared an almost 40-year high of 6.7% in March, a jump from 5.6% a month earlier on the back of soaring energy prices, data from the Central Statistics Office showed on Thursday, Reuters reported. Diesel and petrol rocketed by 46% and 35% respectively year-on-year while food prices rose by 3.1%. Prices overall were 1.9% higher than February, the fastest month-on-month rise since monthly figures were first collected in 1997.

A High Court application seeking approval of a financial arrangement that would write off the bulk of restaurateur Jay Bourke’s €13.7 million debts has been withdrawn, the Irish Times reported. The withdrawal came following an objection from Pepper Finance, which is owed €12.2 million from a contingent liability arising from Mr Bourke’s loans on Co Meath hotel Bellinter House, which he co-owned. Pepper would be paid less than 1 per cent of its debt under his proposed insolvency arrangement. Mr.

Russian airlines could be frozen out of the aircraft leasing market well beyond the Ukraine conflict, one of the industry's biggest players warned on Tuesday, blaming what executives have described as a default involving hundreds of Western jets, Reuters reported. Global leasing companies had until Monday to sever ties with Russian carriers under Western sanctions imposed over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, but executives say only a fraction of the more than 400 jets directly involved have been returned.

All Irish lessors terminated their Russian airline leases by Monday's European Union sanctions deadline and have so far had limited success in recovering their aircraft, the representative body for the sector in Ireland said, Reuters reported. Aircraft Leasing Ireland (ALI), members of which include SMBC Aviation Capital, Avolon, Aircastle and AerCap Holdings , which is the world's biggest aircraft leasing company, said that all of its members have complied fully with the sanctions.

Irish retail sales rose in February as Covid-19 restrictions were lifted and consumers spent more in bars, and on hardware and electrical goods, the Irish Times reported. Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures show retail volumes were up 0.9 per cent month on month. The sectors with the largest monthly increases were bars (13.9 per cent); hardware, paints and glass (7 per cent); and electrical goods (4.8 per cent). Sales volumes, however, in department stores declined by 5.4 per cent.