Retailers are going to have their best Christmas since 2009, according to employers' group IBEC.
Its prediction is that more money is likely to be spent in the shops this December, €3.96 billion. That would be an increase from €3.88 billion in 2013 - a rise of over 2%.
Irish households will spend an extra €650 to €750 in shops this month, compared to other months of the year.
It is also a cheaper Christmas this year, with competition keeping prices down and goods inflation at minus 2%. IBEC says goods prices this December are at their lowest level since December 2002 and that downward price pressures will continue into the post-Christmas sales period.
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MORNING BRIEFS - American real estate giant Hines says building homes will be its priority for Cherrywood, after the firm completed the purchase of the 400-acre South Dublin site.
It has approval for the construction of up to 3,800 apartments and houses as well as a town centre and says it aims to deliver homes and apartments to the market "as quickly as possible". Hines also plans to expand the business park.
The company paid about €280m to NAMA, Lloyds and Danske Bank for the site, which includes Cherrywood business park and surrounding land in what's one of the biggest development land sales to take place in the last ten years.
Hines' Irish property portfolio is now worth approximately €1 billion. It also owns properties at Spencer Dock in Dublin and a majority stake in Liffey Valley shopping centre.
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Swiss voters have rejected a referendum requiring the country's central bank to hold at least 20% of its €433bn balance sheet in gold. Had it been approved, it would have led to purchases of at least 1,500 metric tonnes over five years.
The proposal stipulating the Swiss National Bank raise the portion of its assets held in gold from about 8% now was voted down by 77%.
The initiative would have also prohibited the SNB from ever selling any of its bullion and required the 30% currently stored in Canada and the UK to be repatriated.
Voters in Switzerland also rejected an initiative to put a cap on immigration in the name of environmental concerns.
Results showed 74% of voters said no in a referendum spearheaded by Ecopop, a group describing themselves as leftist ecologists, who claimed the country was being "buried under concrete" owing to the growing influx of foreigners.
