ISEQ makes a positive start to week

Ryanair's share price leaped ahead by over 3% today despite a report claiming workers there have complained about low pay, long hours and having to pay for water during flights.

A union website set up to deal with complaints has received more than half a million hits from 51,000 people in the past few months, including comments described as “genuinely shocking”.

However, Ryanair later claimed there was "no evidence of any Ryanair employee participation" on the website, as the carrier's share price closed up 17c to €5.82.

This mirrored a positive day for the ISEQ index in general which added 44.48 points to 6417.53.

Most of the financials enjoyed a good day. AIB increased 21c to €15.61, Anglo Irish gained 27c to €19.17, while Bank of Ireland was up 6c to €12.40.

It was a tough day for Irish Life & Permanent however, which lost 30c to close at €14.20.

Pharmaceutical giant Elan closed up 40c €21.30. Building group CRH added 16c to €19.91.

Waterford Wedgewood remained unchanged at 7c despite an announcement that, on a like-for-like basis (at constant exchange rates), sales during December 2004 were 2% up on the same month of the previous year.

"This continues the improvement, which we reported at last month's extraordinary general meeting, which showed sales in November 2004 increased by 3% over the same month of the previous year on a like-for-like basis," the company said today.