Some have warned that the tariffs to be announced this afternoon in the Rose Garden in Washington could be a bigger financial calamity than the great financial crisis of 2008.  Others have called for cool heads and for the EU to respond very carefully to whatever tariffs are announced.

Either way change is on its way to world trade patterns and investment and Ireland could be disproportionately impacted. 

Joe discusses this and more with Mike O’Sullivan the Director of Unio Wealth Managers and the author of 'The Levelling and How Globalisation Is Coming To An End'. 

Wednesday's business news headlines along with Joe Lynam.

This week it emerged that the EU commission had responded to a question from an MEP using AI. And last month McDonalds said it would use AI in all of its American drive thru outlets.  So adoption is happening - whether we like it or not.  So how do ordinary companies use AI in an ethical or cost saving way and how do we ease people out of the business who refuse to retrain or change work functions? 

All to discuss with Rohan Gupta who is Deloitte’s Global Leader for Enterprise AI.

Monday's big business stories along with Joe Lynam.

Something worrying is underway in Irish tourism.  The number of visitors to this country in February was down a whopping 30% on the same time last year.  And those who did come spent less as well.  

The great and the good of the tourism sector meets in Killarney this week as part of the ‘Meitheal conference’ and one of the key speeches will be from the Tourism Ireland chief executive is Alice Mansergh who joined Joe on the show this morning.

Nua Money is a non bank mortgage lender, which has been in the home loan market for less than a year. Alongside normal home loans, Nua has also just launched a new Freedom product which can release so-called ‘mortgage prisoners’.  Now with interest rates falling Nua might be able to steal some market share from the pillar banks.  Speaking to Joe this morning was Mark Watson the Chief Executive of Nua Money. 

Datavant is an American health data platform which helps companies in the healthcare sector to process the terabytes of data garnered every year from patients and hospitals.  Now they are opening in Galway and creating 125 jobs in the first phase. Datavant adds to the growing Medtech cluster in the West of Ireland which already includes Medtronic, Boston Scientific and Aerogen. Ciaran O’Toole is Datavant Vice President, Engineering and Galway Technical Lead and joined Joe Lynam on the show this morning.

The number of companies going into insolvencies fell in the first quarter of this year. And according to PwC creditors are more patient these days than banks or the taxman.  They are just 2 of the findings in the latest insolvency report, which also found that not as many retailers went bust this year than last year just after Christmas. Ken Tyrell is the Business Recovery Partner with PwC and joined Joe Lynam on the show this morning.

Russ Mould from AJ Bell joins Joe Lynam for Breakfast Business to go through all the big business news.

Anne Butterly is March’s Repak Business Person of the Month.

Anne is the brain behind EasyDry, a strong disposable paper towel business that you’re sure to see in most hairdressers across the country.

In the process, those same hairdressers have saved an estimated 4 litres of water for every towel no longer washed.