Taoiseach Enda Kenny gets tough on Ireland’s bank debt
ENDA KENNY AND DAVID CAMERON REVIEW PROGRESS ON BRITISH-IRISH RELATIONS
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has toughened Ireland’s demand for concessions from the European Union on the debts sustained by the Irish taxpayer from the banking crisis.
“The principle that there can be no shared European taxpayer responsibility for banks without shared control and supervision is reasonable,” he said in a speech in the Mansion House in the City of London this afternoon.
“But the corollary must also be true; where the policy for dealing with bank failures was determined at European – and not national – level, so too must the burden of the legacy costs of those policies.”
Mr Kenny, who is meeting British prime minister David Downing Street this afternoon, argued that Irish banks “need to accelerate the work-out of mortgage arrears and other non-performing loans”, saying that he hoped for progress on th e issue this week.
Such changes, he said, would “give confidence to investors and visibility and hope to the tens of thousands of families and small businesses in debt difficulties”.
Mr Kenny said Irish banks need to cut their costs, he went on, while ‘after a decade of a property boom and bust, there is a need for the banks to re-skill in order to improve their ability to lend prudently into the real economy’.
Earlier, Mr Kenny has strongly supported the United Kingdom’s continued membership of the European Union, just hours before meeting prime minister David Cameron.
“We see the British relationship with the EU as being a two way relationship – Britain benefits from its membership of the EU, and the EU is better off with Britain as a leading member making a valued contribution,” he said before the talks at Downing Street.
Mr Kenny said the UK’s membership benefited Ireland, too. “Having the ability to work together within the European Union on the many issues on which we are of like mind – the single market, trade and so on – amplifies the impact of our excellent relationship generally,” he said.
“Both our economies are closely tied in so many ways and we want this close relationship to continue and be built on for many generations to come,” he said, in a speech in the Mansion House in the City of London this morning.
“Britain remains Ireland’s largest export destination and Ireland is the 5th largest recipient of British exports. While we have individual areas of expertise, when it comes to exports we have shared strengths in sectors such as financial and business services,” he added.
Referring to the Irish banking crisis, he said: “Following years of reckless lending, Irish banks were bailed out at a cost of €64 billion to Irish taxpayers – equivalent to over 40 per cent of GDP or €35,000 for every household in the country – and over ten times the cost of bank rescues in any other euro zone country.
“If it hadn’t been for this uniquely onerous burden, Irish public debt levels would now be below the euro zone average,” said Mr Kenny, who will address the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce later before going to No 10.
The meeting at Downing Street will be the first annual summit to review progress on the statement the two leaders signed last year on developing British-Irish relations in a range of key areas over the next decade.
They will also discuss the current situation in Northern Ireland, some 15 years on from the signing of the Belfast Agreement.
Mr Kenny will also brief Mr Cameron on the progress and remaining priorities of Ireland’s EU presidency, which ends in June.
Mr Kenny told the Dail last month he would raise Marian Price ’s situation in Maghaberry prison with Mr Cameron.
The one day visit to London is the start of a period of intensive promotion of Ireland abroad by the Taoiseach, both before and after St Patrick’s Day.
Following the Downing Street meeting, the Taoiseach will attend the Champ St Patrick’s Day reception sponsored by Tourism Ireland at the Houses of Parliament, Westminster.
Champ is a not-for-profit organisation which promotes peace in Northern Ireland, and throughout Ireland and the UK.
Revenue Commissioner’s online guide to property values too vague & not realistic
People will begin to receive letters detailing the amount of property tax owed this week
The Revenue’s online guide to property values has been branded as “misleading and vague”.
The website, which is intended to give homeowners a rough estimate of their property tax liability, went live yesterday.
The site’s calculator values property according to three basic criteria – property type, location and whether the property was built before 2000.
Several experts, however, said the estimates bore little or no relation to the current market values of houses as the evaluation criteria were “too vague”.
Property economist with Daft.ie Ronan Collins said the calculations left out a large number of factors which affect the value of a property.
“They don’t have key information for example the number of bedrooms for every property in the country or the square meterage.”
“That presents a number of issues not just in Dublin where values can vary hugely in a short distance but also in other parts of the country,” he said.
Houses for sale in the Sallynoggin area of south Dublin, for example, averaging €239,500, according to Daft.ie, are worth €450,000 — €500,000 based on Revenues estimates which is a difference of €450 per annum in property tax.
In other cases, estimates appeared to underestimate the value of the property.
A semi-detached house at Newtownpark Avenue in Blackrock, south Co Dublin, for instance, would fit somewhere in a price band of between €300,001-€350,000, substantially below current market valuations, delivering a lower tax liability.
Fianna Fail’s local area representative for Dun Laoghaire described the Revenue’s estimates as “incorrect, misleading and damaging”.
He claimed that current market values for a significant number of properties in the Dun Laoghaire area were “no where near the rates” which Revenue was estimating.
“Revenue has based property values on electoral divisions which is no way indicative of current market values.”
“The current form of calculation is incorrect, misleading and damaging to those already struggling to make ends meet and it completely ignores the reality for the Dublin area that property values can differ greatly over small distances.”
Revenue has acknowledged its calculator is not entirely accurate in all cases and homeowners will be able to appeal a valuation.
People will begin to receive letters detailing the amount of property tax owed this week.
Huge increase in Irish patients flying abroad for health treatment
There has been a massive increase in the number of Irish people applying to have their medical treatment carried out abroad.
Figures released for 2012 and the first two months of this year show almost 1,000 patients applied to travel abroad for operations.
The State spent more than €7m on patients travelling abroad for operations last year – but it also refused a number of applications. A total of 858 patients applied for treatment abroad in 2012 – and 791 were approved.
In the first two months of this year, some 126 applications have been made for treatment abroad, of which 116 have been approved and eight declined.
This is a big increase on the 2011 figure, when 481 applications were made. Some 388 were approved and 48 were declined.
Over the last five years, the numbers travelling overseas for procedures has more than doubled. The HSE operates the ‘treatment abroad’ scheme, which allows patients access to procedures that are not available here.
It allows patients to travel to another EU member state, or Switzerland, for the treatment, provided certain criteria are met.
Decision
A referring consultant has to certify that they recommend that the patient is treated abroad, and that it is medically necessary.
Under the scheme, the HSE has to give a decision prior to the patient travelling abroad. It takes up to 20 working days for a decision to be made.
Labour TD Gerald Nash sought information this week on whether the terms of the scheme could be reviewed to “ensure that reasonable accommodation and baggage costs are included for patients with mobility issues who are required to avail of the scheme on a frequent basis”.
However, he was told that, under the regulations, there are “no provisions obliging the State to make payments towards accommodation and baggage costs of people availing of treatment” under the scheme.
But in exceptional circumstances “and despite budgetary pressures generally on the budget of the HSE” some discretionary assistance is made available on a case-by-case basis.
Under the criteria set down by the HSE, self-referrals for treatment abroad are not acceptable.
Noma Danish restaurant leaves a bad taste with their guests
First it was the Fat Duck, and now it’s Noma – it seems that being rated as the world’s best restaurant says relatively little about standards of hygiene.
More than four-fifths of diners at the Michelin two-starred restaurant in Copenhagen fell ill in a five-day period in mid-February, according to a report by Danish food inspectors on Friday.
Famed for its dishes such as deep-fried reindeer moss and a flowerpot with radishes planted in hazelnut soil, Noma has sparked a boom in Nordic cuisine and has been rated by Restaurant magazine as the world’s best place to eat three years running. René Redzepi, its head chef, is known for foraging for ingredients by the Danish seaside.
Noma is one of the world’s most exclusive restaurants, offering a 10-course tasting menu costing DKr1,500 ($260) to 40 guests at lunch and dinner.
But 63 out of the 78 diners who ate there from February 12-16 fell ill with vomiting and diarrhoea after contracting a norovirus. A kitchen worker also became ill on February 15, but his email that evening to managers was read only three days later because of the weekend.
The inspectors blamed poor hand hygiene and a lack of hot running water in one of the kitchen’s sinks. They also issued a warning as Noma failed to react quickly enough to emails from guests and a kitchen worker saying they had become sick.
“It was a cocktail of different noroviruses brought into the kitchen by an [unsuspecting] employee. Because of poor hand hygiene the food was contaminated. Noma could have also prevented some of the cases if they had read emails [from customers] in time,” Bjorn Wirlander, head of control and enforcement at the Danish food authorities, told the Financial Times.
Noma’s embarrassment is reminiscent of events at the Fat Duck in Bray, west of London – a former recipient of Restaurant’s “world’s best” rating – in 2009 when at least 240 diners suffered gastroenteritis. The outbreak was blamed on contaminated oysters and handling of food by infected staff, and was called the world’s biggest outbreak of a norovirus in a restaurant.
Noma said it was in talks with the affected diners about compensation and had taken steps to improve its procedures. “It is something that affects us all deeply and that we are really sad about,” Peter Kreiner, Noma’s managing director, told Danish newspapers.
The Danish authorities have also downgraded its “smiley rating” for food safety from a big smiley to a small smiley. Mr Wirlander said that meant Noma had to pay for the follow-up inspection itself.
But Noma can draw some succour from the Fat Duck case. Despite the heavy publicity, the Heston Blumenthal-run restaurant still received tens of thousands of calls a day from would-be diners in the aftermath of the outbreak.
Noma is currently booked up until the end of May, so it will discover if the norovirus outbreak affects bookings only on April 8 when its June reservations open.
Resistance to antibiotics risks health ‘catastrophe’ to rank with terrorism and climate change
Britain’s health system could slip back by 200 years unless the “catastrophic threat” of antibiotic resistance is successfully tackled, the Government’s Chief Medical Officer warns today.
In her first annual report, Dame Sally Davies says the problem of microbes becoming increasingly resistant to the most powerful drugs should be ranked alongside terrorism and climate change on the list of critical risks to the nation.
The growing ineffectiveness of many antibiotics against infection is being compounded by a “discovery void”, as few new compounds are being developed to take their place. Dame Sally calls for a string of actions to tackle the threat, which is likely to include tighter restrictions on how GPs prescribe antibiotics for their patients.
Declaring that in 20 years’ time even minor surgery may lead to death through untreatable infection, she warns: “This is a growing problem, and if we don’t get it right, we will find ourselves in a health system not dissimilar from the early 19th century.”
Although the problem of antibiotic or antimicrobial resistance has long been recognised, Dame Sally has chosen to give it new prominence, urging that the level of threat it represents to the nation as a whole needs to be sharply re-evaluated. “I knew about antimicrobial resistance as a doctor, but I hadn’t realised how bad it was or how fast it is growing,” she said.
In her report, published today, she says: “There is a need for politicians in the UK to prioritise antimicrobial resistance as a major area of concern, including on the national risk register and pushing for action internationally as well as in local healthcare services.
“Antimicrobial resistance is a ticking time-bomb not only for the UK but also for the world. We need to work with everyone to ensure the apocalyptic scenario of widespread antimicrobial resistance does not become a reality. This threat is arguably as important as climate change.”
The Government’s Chief Pharmaceutical Officer, Keith Ridge, said although the control mechanism for prescribing antibiotics had been strengthened in hospitals, there would need to be tighter and more thoughtful control of antibiotic prescriptions in GPs’ surgeries.
Tropical rain-forests will survive global warming
THERE IS HOPE THAT NATURE COULD COPE WITH THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE WAS BOOSTED YESTERDAY BY A BRITISH-LED STUDY OF RAINFORESTS.
It found that tropical forests are more likely to survive global warming than previously thought.
Tropical forests such as the Amazon are vital stores of carbon, absorbing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
But if trees are lost through, for example, logging or drought, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere as the trees are burned or decay.
And one of the UN’s major programmes to mitigate climate change relies on rainforest stability to lock carbon within the trees.
The international team, which includes scientists Leeds, Exeter, Oxford, Sheffield and London Universities and the UK’s the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in the UK, used computer simulations to test the impact on forests of 22 possible changes in the climate.
They found that in only one case was there a loss of forest cover and that was only in the Americas.
The study, in the journal Nature Geoscience, accepts that there are uncertainties, notably in how plants function.
But lead author Dr Chris Huntingford from the CEH said: “Despite this we conclude that based on current knowledge of expected climate change and ecological response, there is evidence of forest resilience for the Americas – Amazonia and Central America- Africa and Asia.”
Co-author Dr David Galbraith of Leeds University said, “This study highlights why we must improve our understanding of how tropical forests respond to increasing temperature and drought. Different vegetation models currently simulate remarkable variability in forest sensitivity to climate change.
“While these new results suggest that tropical forests may be quite resilient to warming, it is important also to remember that other factors not included in this study, such as fire and deforestation, will also affect the carbon stored in tropical forests.
“Their impacts are also difficult to simulate. It is therefore critical that modelling studies are accompanied by further comprehensive forest observations.”
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