BROAD WELCOME FOR COUGHLAN'S MATHS BONUS POINTS SUPPORT - Teachers may have given her the silent treatment yesterday but the Minister for Education, Mary Coughlan, has received a much warmer response from the business community after she said she supported the introduction of bonus points for those undertaking Leaving Cert Honours maths.
Diarmuid O'Brien is a director of CRANN, the nanoscience research institute based at Trinity College Dublin and UCC. He says the move is critical if Ireland is going to continue to compete to obtain international funding and get investment from industry and research within the universities. He says the country has a pipeline of talented people coming through and anything that can be done to encourage students in the maths, science and engineering subjects is a very positive step.
Paul Sweetman, a director of IBEC group ICT Ireland, says the next step is to try and implement the bonus points for honours maths. He says the issue will play a strong role in enhancing the country's competitiveness and says that Ireland has achieved significant success through our powerful export sector. Within that, education and high level skills are key competitive factors, he adds. He says a rapid decision and implementation is key.
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MORNING BRIEFS - British Airways and Spanish flag carrier Iberia said this morning that they had signed a merger agreement to create a leading European airline following a preliminary accord in November.
*** Retailer Marks & Spencer said today it had shared out an £80m sterling bonus pool between staff as it revealed a better-than-expected 5.1% surge in fourth quarter sales.
*** On the day that Tiger Woods makes his return to competitive golf at the US Masters, a new study by economists at the University of California shows that the collective loss in stock market value of all the companies that Woods endorsed was between $5 and $12 billion by the middle of December.
*** Figures from home guarantee scheme Homebond show that the number of new homes registered in March fell by almost 70% compared with the same month last year. Homebond said just 131 homes were registered in the month, compared with 422 a year earlier.
*** Greece's borrowing costs are soaring as investors remain dubious about the EU-IMF deal to help the government in Athens sort out its financial mess. The jitters over Greece meant Europe's main stock markets closed lower. Meanwhile, the prospects of an ECB interest rate increase anytime soon have receded with the news that the tentative economic recovery in the euro zone stalled in the last quarter of 2009.
*** A survey by Chill.ie, Ireland's largest independent online insurance broker, has shown that while the cost of insurance premiums are continuing to rise, consumers can still save an average of €165 by shopping around at policy renewal time.
*** The Dubliner magazine is to begin its new life today as a free weekly rather than a paid for monthly magazine. It is to be distributed free with the Evening Herald every Thursday starting today.
*** The company that makes Dettol and Cillit Bang had the best paid chief executive on the FTSE 100 during 2009. Bart Becht, boss at Reckitt Benckiser, took home £92m sterling last year.
