Irish Government loses €1.5m a day on illegal cigarettes
Irish Tobacco Manufacturers Advisory Committee estimates that the Irish Government is loosing something like €1.5 million every day to illegal cigarette sales.
“Criminals are winning hands down” in the Government’s fight against illegal cigarette sales, a tobacco industry lobby group says.
It says that budget tax hikes on cigarettes will only serve to drive up criminal activity.
Figures released by the Irish Tobacco Manufacturers Advisory Committee (ITMAC) estimates that the Government is losing €1.5 million every day to illegal cigarette sales.
They estimate that while criminals are earning over €640,000 daily from sales of illegal tobacco, the annual loss to the Government in VAT and excise is €580 million.
Compiling the figures from CSO and EU Eurobarometer statistics, ITMAC estimates that over 1.6 billion cigarettes smoked in Ireland this year will be non-Irish duty paid. It says that by the end of 2012, this will mean a loss to the economy of over €730 million.
The number of cigarettes smoked in Ireland on which duty is not paid to the Government is also increasing according to ITMAC. Following VAT and excise hikes in last year’s budget which brought the cost of a packet of cigarettes to over €9, the rate of cigarettes on which duty is not paid here rose from 24.5 per cent in 2011 to 28.2 per cent this year.
ITMAC estimates that of the 28.2 per cent non-Irish duty paid tobacco consumed in Ireland; approximately 18.4 per cent is now illegal. Criminals will net over €230 million this year or €640,000 day from illegal tobacco trade, the group says.
With days to go before the budget, the tobacco lobby group claims that by raising the cost of cigarettes, the government has neither deterred smoking nor increased revenue.
Medicinal cannabis could be here next year in Ireland
Although the legalisation of recreational cannabis is certainly not on the horizon in Ireland, and won’t be any time soon, medicinal cannabis could be available as soon as next year.
Current law rules out even medicinal cannabis, except for research, but the Government has a different attitude to its predecessor, when Mary Harney was reluctant to loosen any kind of controls.
Now-resigned junior health minister Róisín Shortall last year said she was examining proposals to make cannabis-based medicines available.
That seems to be proceeding, with the Irish Medicines Board receiving a request from a manufacturer looking for permission to sell medicines containing cannabis.
A spokesperson told the Weekend Review: “Department officials have been engaging with experts on how best to legally describe authorised cannabis-based medicinal products while maintaining existing controls on cannabis and cannabis substances to enable such authorised medicinal products to be prescribed in Ireland and used by patients.
“While it is not possible to set out an exact time frame, it is hoped to bring forward legislative proposals in early 2013,” the statement added.
Euro-zone jobless figures hit a new record high of 19 million
Around 19 million people in the eurozone are without jobs.
Unemployment rates in the eurozone have risen to the highest level since the Euro currency began, and there are warnings the situation could get worse.
The jobless rate in the 17 nations that use the Euro currency rose to 11.7 per cent in October, up from 10.4 per cent last year.
It is the 14th consecutive monthly record since September 2011 when unemployment hit 10.3 per cent.
Around 19 million people are without jobs.
The highest rate was recorded again in Spain, where 26.2 per cent of adults are out of work.
Austria posted the lowest rate at 4.3 per cent while Germany and the Netherlands were at 5.4 and 5.5 per cent respectively.
Katinka Barysch from the Centre for European Reform says there is no one-size-fits-all-solution to the jobs crisis.
“Unemployment among young people has always been higher than general joblessness but the economic crisis has widened the gap further,” she said.
“Many measures will not bite until growth returns.”
Some experts predict the region’s unemployment will get worst next year with the financial crisis unlikely to improve in Spain and Greece.
The head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, has conceded the single currency is unlikely to improve until the second half of next year.
The latest unemployment numbers coincide with a fall in inflation, leaving the possibility of the Central Bank introducing further measures to boost the economy
A low carbon future is the one we all Globally have to fight for
United Nations negotiations in Doha are just a sideshow. The real climate change battle is being staged elsewhere.
A wind farm near Dessau in Germany, a country that is leading the drive towards de-carbonisation.
An innocent observer could be forgiven for thinking that the United Nations climate talks, now hotting up in the Qatar capital of Doha, would be the focus of the international fight to combat global warming. But the innocent observer would be wrong. There is indeed a battle going on, one that will determine the planet’s future, but it is not between the negotiators finding new ways to disagree over the implementation of decisions they have already made.
The battle is being waged in energy and finance ministries around the world, and in the boardrooms of energy companies and their bankers. It is the battle between a high-carbon and a low-carbon energy future. And the outcome is unclear.
On the one hand, global investment in renewable technologies, particularly wind and solar, has been racing ahead: for the past three years it has exceeded investment in generation from fossil fuels. Last year, fully 70% of all European power investment was in renewables.
Leading Europe’s drive towards decarbonisation is Germany, whose national “energy transition” will reduce emissions by 40% by 2020 and by 80% by 2050 without use of nuclear power – using renewables and energy efficiency alone. Meanwhile, China has become the world’s largest producer of both wind and solar power. In California, South Korea and Australia new emissions-trading schemes have recently put a price on carbon.
Yet at the same time the world is also going in the opposite direction. More coal – the dirtiest fossil fuel – was used to produce electricity last year than for 40 years. As the International Energy Agency warned this month, this is driving up global carbon emissions, which rose by an alarming 3% in 2011.
Coal burning now represents almost a third of all power generation; it is rising even in Europe, as the economic slump slashes the carbon price. And there is more to come: the World Resources Institute reports that globally no fewer than 1,200 new coal plants are currently proposed, two-thirds of them in India and China. Meanwhile, Canada leads the countries exploiting highly carbon-polluting tar sands, and the oil majors eye up the Arctic for new oil.
The environmental movement has tried hard to explain climate change in terms of emission trends, targets and international treaties. But as the British thinktank Carbon Tracker has pointed out, it’s really just simple maths. If the world is to limit global warming to 2C, it must keep greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to under 450 parts per million. We are currently at 392, and rising fast. To have a good (80%) chance of staying within the 2C limit, that means the world can emit only another 565 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. But global fossil fuel reserves are much bigger than that, equivalent to 2,795 gigatonnes, or five times the safe amount.
In other words, we can only avoid devastating climate change if we keep most of the world’s fossil fuels, including almost all of its coal, in the ground.
Is that possible? Can we deliberately forgo using our most precious resource – the fuels that have powered 200 years of industrialisation – for the sake of future generations?
It is absolutely possible. The stone age did not end because we ran out of stone. We know how to produce energy without carbon emissions – through renewables, geothermal and nuclear power and much greater energy efficiency.
The variable supply of renewables needs to be overcome through interconnected smart grids that ensure that electricity can flow from wherever it is being generated to wherever it is needed, with demand adjusted to supply. Gas (the least emitting fossil fuel) can provide baseload capacity, as long as it is located where carbon capture and storage technology can in due course be applied.
Creating a decarbonised energy system of this kind will not be cheap. But there is no energy future that is cheap. Over the past few years the US has experienced a glut of shale gas that has reduced its price dramatically – and by displacing coal, cut US emissions. But in Europe it is unlikely that shale gas can be extracted cheaply; fierce competition as global demand rises will force its price up.
As the Confederation of British Industry warned when George Osborne suggested that the UK should embark on a new “dash for gas”, a fossil-dependent future would leave the economy highly vulnerable to volatile energy prices. The huge advantage of renewables is that, once built, they provide free energy not subject to geopolitical insecurities.
So the war that has been raging within the British cabinet over energy policy in recent weeks is not just some local political spat. It is an expression of a much larger global battle. The EU must choose whether to bolster its carbon price and commit to a 2030 renewables target, or see its green technology industries beaten in global markets.
President Barack Obama can fulfil the promises he made on entering office to set America on a clean energy course, or give in to the powerful fossil fuel lobbies. Most of all, China – now the world’s biggest carbon emitter – must decide whether to shift towards gas or to maintain its dependence on imported coal.
There are business forces lined up on both sides of this global battle. Counterposed to the fossil fuel industries are the environmental sectors that benefit from climate policy – now a $4tn industry that is sustaining a large number of jobs and growth. The CBI has come out in favour of a 2030 decarbonisation target, and this is a sure sign of shifting economic power.
For the UN negotiators in Qatar, this year’s talks are just the skirmishes before the key date of 2015, when a new global agreement must be achieved. Between now and then we will know if the world’s governments are committing to a low carbon future of tolerable safety, or condemning us to a high-carbon one, and to the catastrophic climate change it will bring.
Pharmacy queen & Bundoran business woman Ramona to inject new life into Dragons’ Den
Glamorous Ramona Nicholas known as a ‘Mother Teresa in Louboutins’ is to be the sexy new ‘Dragon’ in the RTE television series.
The 35-year-old behind the 12-strong chain of Cara Pharmacies has been recruited to follow in the footsteps of Sarah Newman and Norah Casey as one of the four business people in the new series of Dragons’ Den.
As the latest series prepares to go into production, businessman and media guru Gavin Duffy is now the “last Dragon standing” from the original show. It is expected that another wealthy Irish businessman from the Irish “diaspora” will be announced as the fourth Dragon in the coming weeks.
Coffee king Bobby Kerr and Black Tie owner Niall O’Farrell told the producers of the show, ShinAwil Productions some months ago that they would be leaving, and publisher Norah Casey announced last week that she would not be taking part in the 2013 series.
“I got a shock,” said Gavin Duffy last week, “and while the timing was late, four weeks before recording, I fully agree with Norah’s decision.”
He said that with all her commitments, “something had to give”. Nicholas, who lives in Bundoran, Co Donegal, with her husband Canice, and owns the Cara chain of pharmacies has cut her television teeth with an episode of The Secret Millionaire where she helped people with alcohol and drug addiction in Galway.
Originally from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, she is the daughter of a plumber and a schoolteacher and after studying pharmacy in Queen’s University she worked in the Dublin chemist shop, learning a lot about business and life.
“I had a very negative attitude to certain problems like alcoholism and drug addiction – when I was 21 I worked as a pharmacist in Coolock (Dublin) and put myself in some situations I probably shouldn’t have, becoming the confidante of a drug addict,” she told the Sunday Independent.
Duffy added: “One of the challenges doing Dragon’s Den is when the cameras stop rolling in the Den, only then does the real work start for a Dragon. Helping startups achieve their potential in the mother of all recessions is no easy work.”
Three young people in critical condition following Mayo 3 car crash
Three young people are in a critical condition in hospital – following a three car crash in Co. Mayo.
The collision occurred earlier this evening on the N17 Galway/Sligo Road at the Kiltamagh Junction.
Two men in their 20s and a 16-year-old girl in one of the cars were taken to Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar – where their conditions are described as critical.
A man in his 70s who was driving the second car was also taken to Mayo General – and a woman in her 60s who was driving the third car was taken to hospital in Galway.
However, their injuries are not believed to be life threatening.
The road is currently closed while Gardaí carry out a forensic examination of the scene – diversions are in place.
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