Irish-based businesses are recruiting and expanding across a wide range of sectors. Here is a selection of people who have moved into interesting new roles.

Irish investment funds IPUT and Davy have made two separate swoops on suburban Cork retail assets.

A man who was seen on CCTV having a 100ml bottle of Ralph Lauren perfume dropped into his hood by another man denied having anything to do with shoplifting and said he did not know the fragrance was in his hood.

THE first phase of a significant €15million motor trade investment on Cork city’s Bandon Road opens next week, indicative of the recovery in the Irish economy, the motor trade and a forerunner of other developments to follow on Cork’s western fringes.

The long-anticipated sale by Nama of €300m in property portfolio loans, associated with a number of O’Callaghan Properties (OCP) assets in Cork, has been welcomed by the company itself as “very positive” and could bring fresh and further investor activity to the city.

A Cork shopping centre has unveiled its new facility for people with special needs.

As those involved in The Young Offenders get ready for the IFTAs, they tell Esther McCarthy about their incredible year, and some major plans for the future

Developer Owen O’Callaghan says he would consider moving his business to Dublin if a merger of Cork’s local authorities goes ahead.

Shower of gifts: One American custom gaining in popularity is the baby shower — 52% of Irish parents said they would or have celebrated the impending birth of their child.

The staff at Mahon Point Shopping Centre look like they’re having a great time in this video.

The founding premises of homewares specialist store, Meadows & Byrne, in Cork City’s Academy Street will only be vacated and leased to restaurant chain, Nando’s, if planning is secured for change-of-use.

Kian Anthony Bourke, who weighed in at 3.31kg, became the first baby arrival in Ireland for 2015, popping into the world just four seconds after midnight.

AS agents Savills predict that 2015 will be the best year for retail in Cork since the downturn began in 2008, and witha number of tenant deals and relocations completed along Patrick’s Street (including SuperDry into the Moderne), a 75,000 sq ft site is now on the market for €6m at Grand Parade/Patrick Street: and retail deals are also flowing at suburban Mahon Point Shopping Centre for its owners, Deka.

See what puddings are worth buying this year. I found plenty to replicate the best of homemade.

Peri-Peri Chicken chain Nando’s has announced the creation of 100 jobs with the opening of two restaurants in Blanchardstown and Liffey Valley in Dublin, as part of anaggressive expansion plan that will see the firm double in size in five years.

Up to 16 employees at two Game video games stores in Cork city have begun a sit-in to “fight for their rights” after their British employer refused to pay them anything beyond statutory redundancy.

FEARS were mounting for the jobs of more than 100 Irish people employed by lingerie chain La Senza after the company fell into administration yesterday.

FOURTEEN food service jobs come on stream in two separate restaurant openings in Cork’s Mahon Point shopping centre and in its nearby retail park this week.

NANDO’S restaurant, which specialises in peri peri flamed grilled chicken, will open its first outlet in Cork today creating 28 jobs.

RETAILERS are expecting bargain hunters to flock to the shops this St Stephen’s Day with even more stores planning to break with tradition and open their doors.

HIGH-STREET chain Debenhams has blamed the economic downturn for its decision to seek at least 170 redundancies across its operations here.

ONE of the country’s biggest property developers – whose latest venture is a state of the art €500 million shopping precinct in Cork City – has criticised the NAMA initiative.

Once a peninsula of green fields and country estates, Mahon in Cork has in recent decades developed into a sprawling suburb of mixed residential housing, a rapid transformation which along with other social factors resulted in it becoming an area of high unemployment.

ONE of the country’s top developers is to pay a €6 million penalty clause to Cork City Council which will help fund a rival’s development of a conference centre in the city’s docklands.

MIDLETON Farmers’ Market celebrated its fifth birthday at Whit weekend. Since it started, the growth of the Farmers’ Market Movement has been nothing short of phenomenal. There are now well over 100 markets in Ireland and others are opening at the rate of one a week.

AN electronic traffic management system is to be installed at Cork’s newest multi-million shopping centre at Mahon Point.

THOUSANDS of people are expected to flock to the opening in Cork tomorrow of the country’s biggest shopping centre outside Dublin.

SANDWICH chain O’Brien’s will pass a major milestone in Cork this week when it opens its 100th Irish outlet at the Mahon Point Shopping Centre.

Tommy Barker, Property Editor

MORE than 2,000 jobs will be created early next year when phase one of Ireland’s largest mixed use commercial developments outside Dublin opens in Cork.

A RECRUITMENT drive to fill 2,200 jobs, which will become available in the retail elements of the €500 million Mahon Point development in the coming years, commences this weekend.

A NEW residential location is just coming up on the radar screen for far-seeing Cork house buyers Jacob's Island.