Euro Ministers agree a temporary euro firewall of €800m
EURO ZONE finance ministers have struck a long-awaited deal to reinforce their anti-crisis “firewall”, temporarily combining their bailout funds to give a total lending capacity of €800 billion.
The agreement is designed to quell market doubt about Europe’s capacity to overcome the debt crisis and to persuade the International Monetary Fund to boost its own firepower.
Underlying the decision is lingering concern about Italy and Spain, whose government introduced a package of austerity measures worth €27 billion in its 2012 budget yesterday.
The agreement ends more than a year of division over the size of the permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM) bailout fund and its temporary predecessor, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).
“I trust that today’s decision will pave the way for an increase of the IMF resources. I see this is a very significant and lasting decision,” said economics commissioner Olli Rehn.
Ahead of the IMF spring meeting in Washington in three weeks’ time, the fund’s chief Christine Lagarde said the European decision would “support the IMF’s efforts to increase its available resources for the benefit of all our members”.
The deal was made public first by Austrian minister Maria Fekter, angering euro chief Jean-Claude Juncker and prompting him to cancel a planned press conference.
Ms Fekter apologised, but her intervention lent a sense of disarray to the proceedings.
In the minutes before she briefed German-speaking journalists, Mr Juncker had complained to ministers about media leaks from their meetings.
He is understood to have expressed particular unhappiness that Spanish paper El País reported virtually all of the ministers’ private exchanges on Spain at their last gathering.
Not long afterwards, Mr Juncker read about Ms Fekter’s disclosure of the firewall deal on his mobile phone.
He cut short the meeting, leaving no time to discuss the allocation of a seat on the executive board of the European Central Bank.
“The decision was not possible. The decision is delayed till mid-April,” Mr Juncker told reporters.
“There was no point in holding a press conference because the Austrian finance minister announced the deal already as the meeting was going on.”
The agreement will see the €500 billion ESM operate alongside the EFSF until mid-2013, and euro zone countries will expedite the payment of capital to the ESM to ramp up its immediately lending capacity.
Germany opposed running the two funds concurrently and wanted the ESM’s firepower to be reduced by the €200 billion EFSF commitment for Ireland, Portugal and Greece. The €200 billion will now be included in the firewall but €240 billion in unspent capacity will not. Also in the mix is the €49 billion that the European Commission’s rescue fund – the European Financial Stability Mechanism – has already paid to Ireland, Greece and Portugal.
A further €53 billion in bilateral loans to Greece under its first bailout is also included.
“All together the euro area is mobilising an overall firewall of approximately €800 billion, more than $1 trillion,” the euro group ministers said in a statement.
German minister Wolfgang Schäuble mentioned the €800 billion figure on Wednesday night, a declaration taken to mean Berlin would accept that figure after resisting such an increase for months.
“That seems to me to be getting into the ballpark of what’s required,” Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said before the meeting. A €500 billion firewall was “insufficient” and €700 billion was still “too low”, he added.
“The market reaction .is to the dollar amounts. So anything that gets you $1 trillion looks like a serious firewall.
“If we get to or beyond[€800 billion], then — [€800 billion] – denominated in dollars – not only is it an enormous amount of money but it presents as a very serious firewall to ward off any attacks on the euro.”
Minister tells the HSE to establish hospital groups around the country
Health Minister Dr James Reilly has told the HSE to establish more public hospital groups around the country in preparation for the establishment of hospital trusts.
Minister Reilly said he had written to the HSE outlining his policy on setting up the hospital groups, and on the management arrangements for those groups, “as part of a series of steps to implement the Government’s health reform agenda”.
“There is a significant benefit to be gained by organising the country’s hospitals into groups,” Minister Reilly said.
“It will allow for Group Chief Executives to develop initiatives and solutions that take account of the synergies between a number of hospitals in the same geographic region thus ensuring quicker treatments for more patients.
“It will be a key part of the wider reform process on our way to Universal Health Insurance.”
Work on developing the new hospital groups is underway, the Minister added.
However Fianna Fáil health spokesman Billy Kelleher said the directive from Minister Reilly “left more questions than answers”.
“There is much to be worried about in the Minister’s letter to the chairman of the HSE today,” Deputy Kelleher said:.
“Minister Reilly has stated that he wants the hospital groups created “as quickly as possible this year” as a forerunner to the establishment of hospital trusts next year.
“This is simply a case of more boards, more bureaucracy, more bluster,” Deputy Kelleher added.
“The Minister has spent a full year in office coming up with a ‘Back to the Future’ plan that offers no clarity on continuity of services and re-establishes a health board structure that we abolished almost a decade ago.
“The Minister needs to be more upfront and accountable to the Dáil when announcing major reforms in the health service rather than rushing announcements out on a Friday evening ahead of a major party conference to create the appearance of achievement in office.”
Sinn Féin’s health spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin meanwhile said hospital services were collapsing while the Minister “builds castles in the air”
“Far from reducing bureaucracy in the HSE, the Minister seems set on implementing another round of bureaucratic changes while services to patients deteriorate further,” Deputy Ó Caoláin said, citing cuts to health services in the North-East HSE region which will affect services at Cavan General Hospital.
Payment system called a shambles as Ireland's councils now say:
We don’t take credit cards
THE Household Charge payment system was described as a “shambles” after a new snag emerged.
Local authorities across the country will not be accepting over-the-counter laser or visa card payments for the levy.
If the payment was to be accepted by debit or credit card, the money would have to go through the councils’ own accounts, which is something they do not want.
A Dublin City Council spokeswoman explained they were only collecting the money on behalf of the Department of the Environment.
The money has to go through the department’s account and not appear on the local authority’s balance sheet.
However, homeowners can submit a completed form, including card details, and it will be sent off to the fee headquarters.
A receipt will not be issued by the council. The proof of payment will only come from the centralised office after the form is processed.
It is feared this could put off many people using the method.
“The whole thing is an absolute shambles and gross incompetence,” Independent TD Finian McGrath told the Herald. “People are so angry. I get a lot of complaints. People are totally confused and senior citizens are upset,” the Dublin North Central TD said.
Mr McGrath said he would not be paying the charge, despite the penalties involved.
“I voted against it in the Dail. In the last week, the way they treated people made me more determined. They have been very insulting and insensitive to the taxpayer.”
Ample: A department spokesman insisted there were ample methods of payment. Laser can be used online, he pointed out.
The deadline for payment is tomorrow, after which a sliding scale of penalties will be applied.
The amount of people who paid the fee was in the region of 30pc at the last count.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has admitted to flaws in the payment system.
He said “probably you could say we should have far more facilities to pay the €100 household charge”.
But Environment Minister Phil Hogan has ruled out any extension to the deadline for payment.
A new draft code of ethics for cheese advertisement’s aimed at children facing a ban in Ireland
Adverts for cheese aimed at children face a ban under a new draft code from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.
Celebrities and sports stars, health and nutrition claims, cartoon characters and cheese will be banned from all food advertisements aimed at children, under a new draft code just published by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.
The authority is inviting public observations on the draft Children’s Commercial Communications Code over the next two months. Once submissions have been taken into account and a final code written, it will be legislated for and is expected to come into force next January.
Its focus is on how foods high in fat, salt and/or sugar are advertised to children. It has been formulated by an expert group which also took account of submissions made in a first round of consultations last year.
Declan McLoughlin, policy officer with the authority said the group had adopted the nutrient profiling model developed by the UK Food Standards Authority for broadcasting regulation in Britain, to assess whether a food or drink had a high fat/sugar/salt content.
“We are not interested in telling people what they should and should not eat. Our interest is in the environment in which they make informed choices,” he said.
Cheese advertisements during children’s television should be banned – apart from for cottage cheese – as it was high in fat, “and saturated fat”.
Other foods that should not be advertised to children include potato crisps, including low fat; most breakfast cereals; biscuits and cakes; confectionary; most pizzas, sausages and burgers; mayonnaise; sweetened milkshakes and fruit juices; cola and fizzy drinks, except diet versions, and, butter and margarine.
The proposal to ban cheese ads to children was criticised by Food and Drink Industry Ireland, the Irish Dairy Industry Association and the Irish Farmers Association.
Kevin Kiersey, chairman of the the IFA’s national dairy committee said the approach lacked credibility and was more likely to damage than improve children’s diets.
“Cheese provides a concentrated source of calcium – an element lacking from many children’s and teenagers’ diets – and many other valuable nutrients.”
Food and Drink Industry Ireland said the proposal was at odds with wider Government food policy. “Promoting our food and drinks industry abroad while undermining it at home sends mixed messages. This confused approach from Government must be resolved quickly,” said director Paul Kelly.
Claire McGee, executive of the the Irish Dairy Industry Association, said banning cheese advertising would “confuse” consumers and undermine government nutritional policy which was to encourage children and teenagers to eat “five portions of dairy every day”.
Mr McLoughlin said most other dairy products could be advertised to children, including milk – full- and low-fat, yoghurt and yoghurt drinks, fromage frais.
“There were no nutritional grounds for excluding cheese from the [nutrient profiling] model,” he said.
CSO figures show that Irish drinking water is of a high standard
Almost 96% of group water schemes complied with E-coli standards in 2010, according to figures released today by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
It found water quality to be generally high in Ireland, with 99.8% of public drinking water supplies compliant with E.coli standards in 2010.
The figures also show a fall in the amount of waste going to landfill, down from two million tonnes in 2007 to 1.5 million in 2010.
The CSO attributes this fall to the economic downturn.
Landfill accounted for 58% of all municipal waste that year compared with an EU average of 38%.
Meanwhile last year, 90% of all new private vehicles licensed in Ireland were in the low emissions category.
The CSO says all those factors, alongside the reduction in energy and transport use because of the economic downturn, have led to an improvement in air quality and the overall environment.
