18 Business Thursday, January 14, 2010 D Business Bites OVERWEIGHT people miss out on jobs because employers assume they are lazy or not hard workers, a study by a weight loss firm claims. Obese staff dread applying for a new job, earn less than other workers and are also more likely to be bullied or overlooked for promotion, the poll found. More than 200 bosses were surveyed, with a quarter of male managers saying they would turn down a candidate purely on their weight, with one in ten admitting they had already done so. Jacquie Lavin, head of nutrition and research at Slimming World, which carried out the research on 2,000 people, said: This survey provides one of the greatest indications yet of the scale of obesity discrimination in the workplace. Waistlines influence bosses 1.5bn in debt, developer cant repay investors cash People involved in adult basic education are being invited to submit nominations for the fifth EBS/Nala Ace Awards. The awards focus on adult literacy programmes that would benefit from further research. Human-size aces Maria Halley and Orla Meehan were on hand yesterday to help launch the initiative. The closing date for nominations is March 31 and forms can be downloaded from www.nala.ie Picture: Jason Clarke Showing their hand for literacy award THE number of new professional jobs being created in the Irish economy was up three per cent for the month of December, meaning businesses here are beginning to show signs of renewed confidence, a new report claims. There were 4,587 new jobs advertised in December 2009, compared with 3,743 new positions in the same month in 2008. The Premier Group Irish Employment Monitor found 2009 ended on a positive note, with the annual increase of 23 per cent representing the first rise in new jobs since February 2008. Brian Murphy, managing director of Premier Group, said: The increase in December brought to an end 21 months of decline in new job numbers. The figures provide further hope that the bottom of the market has been reached and we can look forward to the new decade with increased confidence. 3% rise in high-end vacancies Edited by Alan Caulfield news@metroherald.ie Business & Finance v$v$ DOWNDOWN vv ISEQISEQ by 33.88 at 3,087.85$1.46 0.90 Firms criticise strike notice CHAMBERS Ireland yesterday criticised the move by trade unions to start issuing notice of industrial action. Public sector unions have begun serving notice on the Government of action to take effect from later this month in protest at Budget pay cuts. Ian Talbot, chief executive of the network, which represents more than 13,000 businesses, said recent public pay cuts are necessary to offset the fall in tax revenue in the recession. By Con DohertyPROPERTY developer Bernard McNamara yesterday admitted he is 1.5billion in debt and cannot pay back 62.5million to inves- tors as ordered by the Commercial Court. Mr McNamara was one of the leading lights of the Irish property boom, and put to- gether a consortium of investors to buy the former Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend for more than 400million through a com- pany he set up, Donatex, which itself was ordered to return 98million to investors. The collapse in property has seen the value of the site plummet to just 50million. When planning permission was not se- cured in the original timeframe, the investors from Davy Stockbrokers demanded their money back and secured the judgment, based on Mr McNamaras personal guarantee, on December 18. Yesterday the court heard Mr McNamara would not be appealing the judgment. The court had already heard the developer has no unencumbered assets and is no longer a person of significant net worth. Yesterday he told RT Radio 1s Drivetime programme few in the country could pay such a large sum, admitting he had total debts of 1.5billion. Mr McNamara, who has resigned from his familys development firm, is suing another partner in the venture, Dublin Docklands Development Authority, claiming it had promised to secure fast-track planning per- mission, when it could not. THANKS to all who entered our competition for a copy of Get Your Tax Back by Aidan Kelly. The last three Ministers for Finance were, of course, Brian Lenihan, Brian Cowen and Charlie McCreevy, and some of you even went back as far as Ruairi Quinn. The five winners are: Sinad OConnell, Aidan McLernon, Michael Breen, Siobhn Cunniffe and Jack Clark. HUMAN resource managers can now keep up with the annual leave of their companys employees via new easy-to-use online software. Annualleave.com was launched yesterday by Evolution, a UCD-based software company. It enables organisations to reduce the hassle and mistakes associated with the administration of annual leave by automatically enforcing business rules set by each organisation. According to its creators, its built-in flexibility ensures that users have complete control and can create other leave types such as maternity leave, parental leave and jury duty. Evolution founder Alistair Thacker said: Companies get to a certain size where a wall planner or spreadsheet just wont work anymore. AnnualLeave.com is online, affordable, easy-to- use and once its set up, you need never worry about employee absences again. AnnualLeave. com is available for free to organisations with ten or fewer employees. For a larger corporation with 300-plus employees, it costs 199.99 per month. SALES of new passenger cars are down 31 per cent on 2009 figures, according to the latest registration statistics. There were 5,521 new registrations up to January 12 in 2010, compared to 8,032 for the same period last year. Dublin has the most vehicles registered at 1,603 (29 per cent) with Leitrim the least at just 20 (0.4 per cent) new cars, car history provider Motorcheck.ie revealed. The number of used cars being imported into Ireland is down significantly, with only 942 secondhand cars registered, compared to figures last year of 1,934. Debts: McNamara index.html2.html3.html4.html5.html6.html7.html8.html9.html10.html11.html12.html13.html14.html15.html16.html17.html18.html19.html20.html21.html22.html23.html