News Ireland as told by Donie on Sunday

A DOUBLE act consisting of Una Gibney and David Shannon 

For the Irish Eurosong contest is revealed

   

A DOUBLE act consisting of Una Gibney and David Shannon has been confirmed as the third act in a five-act race to represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest.

The finalists will battle it out on The Late Late Show Eurosong 2012 show on February 24th.

They will compete against Jedward and Donna McCaul in a bid to represent Ireland in the contest in Baku, Azerbaijan, in May.

It is expected that the remaining two acts and the five song titles will be officially announced this weekend.

RTÉ appointed five mentors from different backgrounds in the music and entertainment industry in Ireland and gave them the responsibility of sourcing the acts and songs.

Show business agent Julian Benson is mentoring Una Gibney and David Shannon. He has also co-written their song with composer Éanán Patterson.

Mr Patterson is the son of Eily O’Grady and the late tenor Frank Patterson.

Gibney, a singer with the band Boogie Nights, spent a year on tour singing with Michael Flatley’s show Celtic Tiger.

Shannon, who was cast in the touring production of Les Misérables , has worked in London’s West End ever since, playing leading roles in shows such as Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, Cats and Sweeney Todd.

Jedward represented Ireland last year in the Fortuna Arena in Dusseldorf and came a respectable eighth. The twins are being mentored this year by former Eurovision Song Contest winner Linda Martin, who won the event in 1992 and came second in 1984.

Donna McCaul represented the country – with her brother Joe – in Kiev in 2005, but failed to qualify for the song contest final. She is being mentored this year by independent producer and director Bill Hughes.

The other two mentors – whose acts are due to be revealed this weekend – are music producer and songwriter Greg French, who is a member of The Brilliant Things, and Edele Lynch, a successful singer and songwriter who made her name as a member of B*witched.

Their album, which Lynch wrote, sold six million copies worldwide.

Lynch has also written songs for Girls Aloud, Sugababes, and more recently has been in the band Barbarellas and has written their album NightMode.

Euro notes are useless? No problem build a home with them

“A billion-euro home”  Buckley says & does it

                         

An unemployed Irish artist has built a home from the shredded remains of 1.4 billion euros, a monument to the “madness” he says has been wrought on Ireland by the single currency, from a spectacular construction boom to a wrenching bust. 

  Frank Buckley built the apartment in the lobby of a Dublin office building that has lain vacant since its completion four years ago at the peak of an ill-fated construction boom, using bricks of shredded euro notes he borrowed from Ireland’s national mint. 

“It’s a reflection of the whole madness that gripped us,” Buckley said of what he calls his “billion-euro home”. 

“People were pouring billions into buildings now worth nothing,” he said. “I wanted to create something from nothing.” 

A wave of cheap credit flowed into Ireland in the early 2000s after Ireland joined the currency zone fuelling a huge property bubble that transformed the country. The bubble’s collapse since 2007 plunged Ireland into the deepest recession in the industrialised world, forcing the former “Celtic Tiger” to accept a humiliating bailout from the EU and the IMF. 

Buckley was given a 100 percent mortgage at the peak of the boom to buy a 365,000 euro home on the far reaches of Dublin’s commuter belt, despite the fact he had no steady income. 

He has separated from his wife who lives in the home, which has since lost at least onethird of its value. 

Living in his “billion euro home” since the start of December, Buckley is working on adding a kitchen to the living room and hall. 

The walls and floor are covered in euro shreddings and the house is so warm Buckley sleeps without a blanket. 

Pictures made from notes and coins decorate the walls, including one of a house, made from Irish 5 pence pieces. “There are houses in Ireland worth less than that,” Buckley quips.

Ireland’s Retailers get a boost with December 2011 sales up by 3%

  

While Irish department stores saw some of the benefit of December’s increase in sales, retail groups warn the industry still faces significant job losses as stores are forced to close

HARD-PRESSED retailers got a boost in December as the volume of retail sales rose by 3 per cent compared to the same period in 2010. Month-on-month sales were up more than 2 per cent compared to November.

However, retail groups warned that the industry was still facing significant job losses as retailers were forced to close stores. They called for Government action to help alleviate the problem.

Department stores saw some of the benefit of December’s increase, with sales there rising by 8.1 per cent over the month. Sales at bars were lifted by 2.7 per cent compared with November.

However, furniture and lighting sales continued to suffer, falling by 5.6 per cent, while food, drink and tobacco in specialised stores saw volume drop by 3.2 per cent.

While sales were 3 per cent higher on an annual basis, industry figures noted that the harsh weather in 2010 had affected sales figures that month.

The volatile motor industry accounted for the bulk of the change, with sales in the sector rising by just over 26 per cent month-on-month. When the motor trade was excluded, sales were only 0.2 per cent higher compared with November 2011, and 0.6 per cent compared with a year earlier.

Analysts said last year’s poor weather made it difficult to identify trends but the sharp fall in retail sales appeared to have slowed.

“Given the difficulty in comparing annual trends, comparing changes over a two-year period may be more appropriate,” said Goodbody chief economist Dermot O’Leary.

“On this basis, core sales volumes were down by 1.7 per cent in December 2011 relative to December 2009, indicating that the retail environment still remains quite depressed, albeit the rate of decline is slower than witnessed earlier in 2011.”

Goodbody is predicting a 3 per cent decline in retail sales for this year as falling employment and higher sales tax hold back any significant improvement.

Bloxham chief economist Alan McQuaid said the approaching VAT hike may have prompted some consumers to shop early, causing a spike in sales.

“Overall there is little to be optimistic about as regards the Irish consumer or personal spending in the immediate future.”

While industry body Retail Excellence Ireland welcomed the jump in sales, it also warned of a challenging year ahead for retailers, with low consumer confidence set to continue and the added pressure of the 2 percentage point VAT rise.