Alex White says it’s time to tell the IMF that ‘enough is enough’
Alex White says if he is elected the next leader of the Labour party there will be no more “adjustment” of €2 billion or anything close to it.
“ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”. That is the message Labour leader hopeful Alex White was conveying today at the Labour Party leadership hustings in Portlaoise.
The hustings:
The Minister for State at the Department of Health was scathing in his speech about the IMF saying that earlier this week “we were treated to another lecture in fiscal orthodoxy by our friends at the IMF in Washington”.
He added:
“We were told once again that we should take 2 billion out of our economy in the 2015 budget. In the rarified world of the IMF this counts as a ‘fiscal adjustment’. Those of us who live in this country know the reality behind those anodyne words.”
White said that a €2 billion “adjustment” means more cuts in public services, more taxes and charges for Irish people and more suffering and distress.
He told the crowd in no uncertain terms that if he is to be elected the next leader of the Labour Party, they will take no more “sanctimonious lectures” from the IMF.
“Let me be clear about this once again. If I am elected as leader of this Party there will be no more “adjustment” of €2 billion or anything close to it,” he said, adding:
Enough is enough.
“It would be better – much better – if the IMF were to give us some real assistance rather than sanctimonious lectures. And they could start with the excessive interest rates they are currently charging,” said White.
Speaking about the beating that Labour got in the local elections, White said the party suffered a “bruising” a few weeks ago.
He said the party should not assume that the numbers they lost in the local elections will return to them, stating that the “stark truth” is that they will only come back to Labour if they respond appropriately to the message the electorate gave them in May.
The message was stark, very stark. Quite simply they told us to: Change, or move off the stage.
He goes on to say that we need to change our message; we need to change the way we do things; we need to change the image we present to the electorate.That process of change will take time. It will not happen overnight.
But we have the opportunity to start that process of change when we elect a new leader on 4 July next.
Bank of Ireland returns to property development lending
BANK OF IRELAND’S RICHIE BOUCHER HAD SOME FARM TIME IN CORRIN MART LAST WEEK.
BANK of Ireland has plunged back into real estate development and construction lending, bulking up its property finance team and signing up to fund another multi-million build in Dublin city centre.
The Richie Boucher-led bank has agreed to partly fund US private equity firm Kennedy Wilson’s development of 164 homes at Clancy Quay in Dublin 8. Kennedy Wilson recently submitted planning proposals for the site, which sits on 5.2 acres on the south bank of the Liffey in an area where rents have rocketed over the past year. Approval is being sought for a mix of apartments and houses. The scheme already has 420 units but its completion was stalled by the credit crisis.
The bank lost billions on property lending when the global financial crisis hit in 2008, but has been persuaded back to the market after years of eschewing deals by spiralling demand for homes and commercial offices evident in Dublin, Galway and Cork.
Bank of Ireland has now funded at least six major property projects in the last 12 months, including the recent refinancing of €150m worth of short-term debt for the development of offices at Central Park. This is the first ever bank loan received by Green Reit, UK property guru Stephen Vernon’s real estate trust which owns 50pc of the Central Park site.
Other projects financed or part-financed by Bank of Ireland include the €22.5m construction of 192 student dorms at the former Montrose Hotel opposite UCD’s campus, the €16m redevelopment of the Burlington Hotel into a Hilton, and Kennedy Wilson’s acquisition of the 200-year-old Shelbourne Hotel through the acquisition of €111m loans connected to a consortium of developers led by Bernard McNamara.
The lender has also diverted staff from other activities to its property finance team in recent weeks, a spokesperson confirmed. The division is led by Paul McDonnell, who having held that role since 2006, has overseen lending to construction projects through both boom and bust.
Bank of Ireland is distinct from its peers in returning wholeheartedly to property lending. Permanent TSB and AIB have been far more cautious, sources said.
“Bank of Ireland is that little bit more aggressive, they got out of the traps first,” said Marie Hunt, head of research at CBRE. Barclays is also lending for construction purposes, she said.
But the norms for bank lending to property projects have changed, she added.
“They’re much more cautious than they were. The terms that were offered in the days of the Celtic Tiger are long gone. It’s now the norm to ask developers to provide 40pc of the money required.”
Bank of Ireland chief Richie Boucher confirmed that the high stake of equity it expects developers to contribute was an issue to construction lending when he appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation in April.
An influx of international banks and private equity fianciers also poses a challenge, Ms Hunt added.
“Domestic banks face more competition on property finance deals than ever before,” she said. “The likes of Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley are very keen to get involved in Irish property at the moment. But this also presents opportunities for Irish banks – we are seeing lots of consortiums coming together to lend. The overseas guys have the equity and the money but not the local expertise, so they’re looking for Irish partners.”
Thousands prosecuted over scrap metal theft in Ireland last year
Over 5,000 people have been prosecuted in 2013 over the theft of scrap metal – including from railway tracks and telecom masts – the government has claimed.
The Dail heard yesterday that lives are being put at risk by a spate of thefts from businesses.
Junior Minister Paschal Donohoe said it is important to recognise that gardai have brought charges against over 5,000 people involved in scrap metal theft in 2014.
He was speaking during a debate on a bill to regulate the scrap metal industry,
Labour TD for Dublin South East Kevin Humphreys said that the theft of scrap metal in Dublin had damaged the city’s reputation. He said the thefts had also done damage to peoples’ homes and had created the “possible loss of life”.
Independent TD Mattie McGrath, who proposed the bill, said thefts are causing havoc in rural communities.
Mr McGrath’s bill, a similar version of which was rejected in 2012, proposes stricter controls on the sale of precious metals but Mr McGrath’s bill was defeated following a vote in the Dail.
Football reduces women’s blood pressure
Despite Ireland’s failure to reach this year’s World Cup in Brazil, the tournament is still attracting a large TV audience. However, a new study has found that actually getting out and playing football may help lower blood pressure in women aged between 35 and 50.
According to the findings, women in this age group with mild high blood pressure who played recreational football over a 15-week period recorded a significant reduction in their blood pressure readings and their levels of body fat.
The women, none of whom had received training in football prior to this, played one hour sessions, three times a week, for 15 weeks.
“After 15 weeks of participation in recreational football, systolic and diastolic blood pressure had fallen by 12 and 6 millimetres of mercury (mmHg) and the women had lost 2.3 kg (5lbs) of fat on average. The football training produced an impressive reduction in blood pressure that was more than twice as big as with swimming performed over the same period as the football,” the researchers said.
The study also noted that the women enjoyed playing the game even if they had never played before.
“The players faithfully attended training, with an attendance rate of over 90%. In fact, through the project period they came to enjoy playing so much that they have now started up their own football club,” the researchers noted.
They pointed out that previous studies they have undertaken have found that football training reduces blood pressure in women aged between 20 and 45 with normal blood pressure, ‘but this is the first study that has looked at the effects of recreational football in women with high blood pressure’.
“As well as the impressive effects on blood pressure and body composition, we also saw a drop in cholesterol and a big improvement in physical fitness as a result of the 15 weeks of football training. In fact, the women were able to run more than twice as far in an endurance test and their heart rate was 14 beats per minute lower when working at moderate intensity,” the researchers said.
They concluded that recreational football ‘is an effective therapy for poor fitness and high blood pressure in 35‒50-year-old women’.
Emperor Penguin now adapting to the climate change
A STUDY SUGGESTS
Emperor penguins have shown to be not as attached to their nesting locations as previously thought, meaning that they could adapt much easier to their changing environment, which is being affected by rising global temperatures.
A new study by the University of Minnesota has observed penguins’ movements over the nesting period and found a new colony on the Antarctic Peninsula, which is believed to have relocated.
Researchers involved in the new study found six instances in just three years in which emperor penguins did not return to the same location to breed. They also report on one newly discovered colony on the Antarctic Peninsula that may represent the relocation of penguins.
University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering researcher and the study’s lead author Michelle LaRue shared her findings at the IDEACITY conference in Toronto on June 20. The study will also be published in an upcoming issue of Ecography, a professional journal publishing research in spatial ecology, macroecology and biogeography.
“Our research showing that colonies seem to appear and disappear throughout the years challenges behaviors we thought we understood about emperor penguins,” said LaRue. “If we assume that these birds come back to the same locations every year, without fail, these new colonies we see on satellite images wouldn’t make any sense.
These birds didn’t just appear out of thin air—they had to have come from somewhere else. This suggests that emperor penguins move among colonies. That means we need to revisit how we interpret population changes and the causes of those changes.”
Emperor penguins are a well-studied species and have recently been elevated to celebrity status with movies like “Happy Feet” and the documentary “March of the Penguins.”
The “March of the Penguins” colony is called Pointe Géologie and it’s been studied for more than 60 years. Researchers observe the colony every year and look, in particular, for birds that have been banded by researchers to return to the colony. In recent decades researchers have been concerned about how receding sea ice may affect the emperor penguins that breed on it.
Over five years in the late 1970s, the Southern Ocean warmed and at the same time the penguin colony at Pointe Géologie, declined by half (6,000 breeding pairs to 3,000 breeding pairs). The decline was thought to be due to decreased survival rates. In other words, researchers thought that the warming temperatures were negatively impacting the survival of the species.
High-resolution satellite imagery has changed all that because now researchers can see the entire coastline and all the sea ice. Because emperor penguins are the only species out on the sea ice, they can look at images and identify their presence through the telltale sign—their guano stain. Before satellite images, researchers thought Pointe Géologie was isolated and there was nowhere else for the penguins to go. The satellite images show that Pointe Géologie is not isolated at all. Plenty of colonies are within easy travel distance for an emperor penguin.
“It’s possible that birds have moved away from Pointe Géologie to these other spots and that means that maybe those banded birds didn’t die,” LaRue said. “If we want to accurately conserve the species, we really need to know the basics. We’ve just learned something unexpected, and we should rethink how we interpret colony fluctuations.”
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