{"id":306758,"date":"2026-02-19T20:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T20:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/306758\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T20:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T20:42:11","slug":"caution-definitely-in-the-air-for-clare-firms-as-business-confidence-drops-nationwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/306758\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Caution Definitely In The Air&#8221; For Clare Firms As Business Confidence Drops Nationwide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Clare businesses claim \u201cCaution is definitely in the air\u201d among consumers in this county.<\/p>\n<p>It comes as a new report has found Irish business confidence to be at its lowest level since the pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>Grant Thornton\u2019s report reveals that confidence among firms in Ireland has dropped to 54%.<\/p>\n<p>This is the lowest it\u2019s been at since the Covid-19 pandemic and is notably down from 81% at the start of last year.<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, global business optimism currently stands at 74%, but this has seen a decrease of 2% since early 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Patrick Bourke of Patrick Bourke Menswear in Kilrush and Ennis says customers are more reluctant to make large purchases.<\/p>\n<p>The report comes at a time when many businesses are adapting to modern methods, with its findings stating that over half of respondents plan to invest in technology to drive productivity.<\/p>\n<p>Ennis Chamber CEO Margaret O\u2019Brien says, meanwhile, the way people shop is rapidly changing.<\/p>\n<p>Listen to the full interview here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clare businesses claim \u201cCaution is definitely in the air\u201d among consumers in this county. It comes as a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-306758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}