The largest private healthcare insurer, VHI, announced across the board price increases yesterday. That will affect hundreds of thousands of customers. Overall, around 50% of Irish adults have private health insurance. That is among the highest in Europe. The body charged with ensuring fair play and that you are not overpaying is the health insurance authority.

Brian Lee is the Chief Executive of the Health Insurance Authority joined Joe this morning on the show.

Friday's business news headlines along with Joe Lynam and Kate English Chief Economist with Deloitte.

As we all know from 2007, a booming economy can collapse very quickly if there’s a major external shock. We’ve similarly low unemployment and high house prices today. So are we just as vulnerable to a serious Trump-shaped externality? Are about to entirely miss the AI boat in Europe?

To discuss further Joe spoke to Neil Hughes the Chief Executive with Azets Ireland.

Joe Lynam takes a run through this morning's business news headlines.

Despite a robust economy Irish business owners and managers have been screaming out that they are bearing the burden and that profit levels have been cut through higher minimum wages and a slew of new benefits for employees including sick and holiday pay. The hospitality sector has been among the most vociferous in its demands for a cut in VAT rates. They look as if they’ll get their wish but will the new government slash red tape and really encourage entrepreneurialism?

Joe discusses this further with Peter Burke who has been retained as the Enterprise Minister and Joe began by asking him what employers can expect from the new government?

We’ve spoken about the energy required to run data centres in the past and how AI will drive that energy demand through the roof. But the sudden arrival of DeepSeek from China seems to suggest that you might not need the type of scale that the US technology giants have been advocating.

Indeed Deepseek has suddenly forced investors and engineers to think again about how AI can and should work. Karen Hao used to write for the WSJ and The Atlantic and was the first to profile OpenAI before the rest of us had heard of it. Joe spoke to Karen on the show and began by asking her about these externalities associated with AI.

Two large South American nations have been in the news lately. One displeased Donald Trump and the other has managed to turn a huge budget deficit into a surplus. Colombia faced immediate tariffs of up to 50% at the weekend because it refused to accept its immigrants deported in shackles from the US. Meanwhile Argentina’s far right president appears to have pulled an economic rabbit out of a hat. To discuss these issues further Joe spoke to y Jon Farmer the Editor of Latin American weekly report.

Joe Lynam brings us Wednesday's business news headlines.