Bank chief Duffy promises to write off more debt for struggling Irish homeowners
AIB BOSS DAVID DUFFY
AIB BOSS DAVID DUFFY VOWS TO HELP THOSE WHO GENUINELY CANNOT PAY
Hard-up homeowners could be thrown a lifeline after AIB promised to write off more mortgage debt.
The bank’s chief executive David Duffy has said his bank will dramatically increase the number of write-offs in the coming months.
The boss of the ruined lender also said that he is confident that AIB will be back in profitnext year.
The promise will give some hope to those who are in arrears and genuinely have no way of repaying their mounting debts.
He told Pat Kenny’s Newstalk show: “We are saying let’s keep people in their homes where possible.
“We have to apply affordability as a principle to all of these situations and it is complex so it does take time.
“In the Oireachtas we said we had done 12,500 solutions, the Oireachtas focussed a little bit on one quarter but if you look at the real issue of how we are servicing those in distress since the beginning of the year.
“And in that circumstance, are we willing to write off debt where it is clearly not affordable? Yes.
“As we have run this machine up and build this machine up over the next six months we will see increased write-offs in AIB.”
Earlier in the week Mr Duffy was criticised following his appearance at the Oireachtas Finance Committee for sending threatening legal letters to those in mortgage arrears.
Politicians on the Committee claimed that sending legal letters to mortgage-holders in arrears was the bank’s idea of a long-term solution.
Pat Kenny claimed that the bank boss had been “caught out” when quizzed by TDs.
The AIB boss said the letters were sent to some homeowners who had not been in contact with the bank even though they were up to three years in arrears.
Mr Duffy added: “That letter said you have not been engaging, you are uncooperative and in the event that you do not engage it could end up in a legal process.”
He said that the bank could work out solutions even for homeowners who are up to three years in arrears.
The AIB chief also said that he does not believe that the bank will need extra cash from the state when new checks, or stress tests, are carried out early next year.
Mr Duffy also said that the full story behind AIB’s attempts to bankrupt former Fine Gael minister Ivan Yates has yet to emerge but did not give details.
On Monday Mr Yates claimed he had been persecuted and driven to the point of suicide by AIB officials even though he agreed to repay most of his debts.
Policy initiatives in Ireland to attract highly skilled non-EU workers still necessary ESRI report shows
A new report published by the ESRI shows that despite the recession Ireland is actively competing for certain non-European Economic Area (EEA) workers.
According to the report, Irish Government policy is to meet labour and skills needs from within the EEA, however the demand for certain niche skills exceeds available supply in sectors such as IT, engineering, finance and healthcare.
Ireland has had to develop new policies to compete for key non-EEA workers, including initiatives to ease immigration-related barriers to employment; facilitated access to permits by highly skilled workers in key occupations identified on the new Highly Skilled Occupations list; introduction of new programmes targeting non-EEA investors and entrepreneurs; and new initiatives to attract and retain certain third-level non-EEA students.
Just over 64,300 non-EEA workers were employed in Ireland in 2012, representing 3.9pc of total persons employed; the corresponding EU27 average is 4.1pc.
Irish policies have been found to be particularly effective in prioritising highly skilled workers – for instance, data show that almost half of non-EU nationals in employment were working in high skilled occupations. Among 20 EU states for which data are available, only the UK and Luxembourg showed higher proportions.
Almost 70pc of non-EU nationals at work in Ireland have high levels of education, degree level and above. This is the highest percentage among the 20 EU states for which data are available.
Using annual remuneration as a proxy for skill level, national data show a growing proportion of employmentpermits issued to workers earning €60,000 and over – up from 12pc in 2008 to 25pc in 2012
However, shortages of highly skilled workers in ICT, healthcare and financial services sectors persist. Specific skills mixes, such as foreign languages and business skills, are also in demand among employers in Ireland.
The report stated that the absence of clearly defined family reunification and long-term residence schemes are possible barriers to attracting non-EEA nationals to Ireland.
Dog owners asked to ‘chip and check’ their pooches for micro-chipping month of Sept.
Sharon Ni Bheolain with Olan Walsh and Charlotte Patten and lurchers Arthur and Eddie
OVER 100,000 pet dogs have been lost in Ireland due to inaccurate and out-of-date microchips.
Dog owners all over Ireland are being asked to ‘chip it and check it’ for the first annual National Microchipping Month in September.
Anyone who owns a dog is being asked to not only micro-chip their hound, but to ensure that the information on the chip is up-to-date.
One in three dogs are microchipped but many dog owners don’t make sure that the details are correct. And some owners go to the trouble of getting a chip, but fail to registerthe details.
REUNITED
It is estimated that over 100,000 dogs have not been reunited with their owners because of incorrect or out-of-date information.
Each chip contains a unique number that corresponds to details. For a microchip to be effective, both the details of the microchip and the owners’ details have to be stored correctly on a safe database, such as that of Fido.ie.
Although it is not compulsory, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Simon Coveney TD is preparing legislation on mandatory dog-chipping.
The minister said that he would “encourage as many dog owners as possible to get their dogs chipped and registered sooner rather than later”.
“Microchipping helps speed up the re-homing of lost or stray dogs.”
Hundreds of vets, animal shelters and pet shops throughout the country are taking part in the initiative in the hope that increased awareness will lead to less strays nationwide and microchip database Fido.ie and Dogs’ Trust are leading the sponsorship.
Thousands of dogs around Ireland will be chipped and registered with Fido as well as other organisations participating, free of charge for the month of September.
Subsidised chipping and registration will take place at hundreds of veterinary surgeries though-out Ireland.
Ex-heavyweight champion boxer Mike Tyson claims he visited Sligo Ireland?
Ex-BOXER Mike Tyson has talked about visiting Gurteen Sligo and how Oliver Cromwell “decimated” Ireland in a bizarre US chat show appearance.
The former world heavyweight champion was a guest on TV show Conan celebrating his twentieth day sober of drugs and alcohol.
During the interview, Tyson (47) asked show host Conan O’Brien if he was Irish, before announcing: “I’ve been to Sligo, Sligo Ireland he insists.”
Mr O’Brien said his ancestors were from Ireland before asking his guest: “Are you Irish?”
Tyson replied: “No. Oliver Cromwell decimated that place and everybody hates the man, they let me know that.”
“You know the Irish hate Cromwell?” Mr O’Brien asked, to which Tyson said: “Yes, yes they do.”
The bizarre exchange prompted perplexed laughter from the studio audience.
The interview clip has also been widely shared across Ireland on social networking websites since the show’s broadcast on Wednesday night.
Sharing a link to the clip, one Twitter user said: “Next time Mike Tyson makes it to Sligo, he won’t have to buy a drink for the whole night.”
Tyson also shared anecdotes including his first meeting with pop star Justin Bieber, and getting headbutted by his pet tiger.
Speaking about his tiger, he said: “On one occasion I went ‘give me a kiss’ and she put her head in and ‘boom’.
“I had gold teeth back then and she knocked my teeth out because her head is like concrete.”
NASA rocket launch to the moon visible to East Coast on Friday last
The launch of LADEE, NASA’s new lunar exploration mission, took place last Friday night ET from the agency’s new Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
If the typical bevy of Friday night activities seems just too boring to bear, try out a rocket launch instead.
The launch was the first to take place at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., and it was visible to a wide array of East Coast onlookers lucky enough to catch a patch of clear sky.
For those not on the East Coast — or anyone lucky enough who had a front row ticket to the rocket launch itself — NASA TV broadcast the event live at 9:30 p.m. ET on Friday.
The goal of the $280 million mission, pronounced “laddie,” is to investigate unknowns surrounding the moon’s atmosphere that were brought up by NASA’s Surveyor 7 mission in 1968. Back then, unexplainable “streamers” of light were noticed on the horizon of the Earth’s natural satellite before sunrise.
Scientists posit that the mysterious moondust is tied to the moon’s atmosphere and its interactions with the surface environment, but they’ve been unable to study the phenomenon thoroughly in the nearly 50 years since the Surveyor 7 mission.
The moon’s boundary surface exosphere, as it’s called, has been left relatively undisturbed thanks to a low number of probe landings of late. That portion of atmosphere — which the Earth has, but which is out of reach beyond the orbit of the International Space Station — also happens to be the most common type of atmosphere in our solar system, explains Space.com’s Miriam Kramer. It exists around Mercury, as well as other large moons and asteroids. That makes Earth’s moon ripe for types of data collection that could open up new understandings into other planetary bodies and their atmospheres.
The LADEE launch marks Virginia-based Orbital’s first rocket launch carrying a payload destined for a spot beyond a low-Earth orbit. The company has produced a series of guidelines for viewing, including the map below.
Also check out its annotated series of Google Earth screenshots outlining the path of the rocket and its potential visibility at different points on the East Coast in and around Virginia and Washington, DC.
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