Irish Election - Coverage of Irish Politics, News and Current Affairs

Big things are happening in a big week for Irish and European politics and, let’s be honest, most of us don’t really understand what’s happening, or why. The budget to be unveiled today and tomorrow will need to cut spending and increase taxes because of the banks, or something. The European summit being held on Friday will save [...]

IMF statement on the US$3 billion loan for Egypt – A number of fundamental structural reforms, including the transition to a VAT-like consumption tax and reform of the highly inequitable and costly system of subsidies, are needed to improve the efficiency of public spending and help reduce the fiscal deficit in the medium term. We [...]

Wall Street Journal article with an interesting bit of news – Last fall, the [UK] FSA [Financial Services Authority] successfully pushed the Bank of Ireland to convert its U.K. operations from a branch into a subsidiary that required more capital, according to people familiar with the matter. The agency also required the U.K. subsidiary of Allied Irish Banks [...]

Brian Lenihan, 8 December 2010 – People should not be surprised that there’s a huge erosion of trust in the Irish banking system when we’ve an endless debate on whether we should be defaulting on the payment of our obligations,” he said.  “A small country like Ireland cannot default without the support of a central [...]

What is an Irish Mortgage-Backed Promissory Note?  Below the fold, some thoughts — on what may be old news — about this question.

Even if today’s Moody’s ratings downgrade could be brushed off with Ireland out of the bond market, there are two other notable developments — both dropped into the Friday afternoon news cycle.  First, the ECB and Bank of England have set up a 10 billion euro swap agreement in which the ECB can access up [...]

We’ll update this post as the day evolves, newer material first. The IMF is lending under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), and not the more common Standby Arrangement.  The EFF is meant for countries with serious medium-term balance of payments imbalances.  That’s the one thing that Ireland — courtesy of its strong export performance — [...]

It’s not recommended.  But it’s prompted by Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan’s repeated claims that bank senior creditors are pari passu with depositors, therefore you can’t burden-share with one without burden sharing on the other (i.e. the ECB, the  Central Bank, and us).  So you start using your favourite search engine to get some information on the actual [...]

It didn’t seem possible that the Irish political system could look more busted today than it did yesterday but that’s where the version of Lanigan’s Ball from the Greens leaves it.   Michael Lowry — having had the leverage of his side-deal with the Coalition for nearly 3 years in return for his vote, runs to [...]

Brian Cowen as quoted by Irish Times – “So the sovereign, if you like, has that funding arrangement in place. We don’t have to borrow any money in respect of the sovereign issues that affect the Government . . .’’ From the FAQs for the European Financial Stability Facility – A16 – Will the EFSF [...]

From the IMF’s annual review of the UK economy (para. 18) – A key underlying vulnerability relates to spillovers from external financial market shocks, given the global reach and connectedness of the UK financial sector. UK-owned banks have consolidated foreign assets exceeding 180 percent of GDP, despite some retrenchment over the last two years. Exposures [...]

Minor but revealing error in Brian Cowen’s interview with Stephen Collins – What has changed during the course of this year is we have had the Greek default and the cost of sovereign debt increased considerably. Greece didn’t default.  Facing market difficulties, it got emergency loans from the IMF and the European Union.   Those loans [...]

In a week when the use of forged documentation in the asylum-system was highlighted with the rejection by the Supreme Court of the appeal of Nigerian asylum-seeker Pamela Izevbekhai against her deportation, FG and Labour are proposing the allow asylum-seekers to work. Despite 13% unemployment and mass-emigration – Alan Shatter and Pat Rabbitte are now [...]

Below the fold, the text of Article 136 from the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which is the consolidated set of treaties relating to the EU; the context of Article 136 itself originated with Lisbon.  This Article is extremely important because the European Commission is making it the legal basis of [...]

Compared to the billions going to the banks (and perhaps soon needed for Quinn), the mere €450m that we will lend to Greece “centrally pooled by the European Commission” may not seem like much.  But according to Brian Lenihan – “The costs of all countries participating, including Ireland, in this facility would be fully covered. [...]

The carefully phrased European Commission approval of NAMA under state aid guidelines is only the beginning of the process.  Bank of Ireland and AIB will still need clearance for the specific balance sheet clearance (NAMA sales plus capital injection) that are still to come.   In that regard, it’s important to look at the seemingly separate [...]