Tag Archives: investment

Colm tweetz:

Full page ‘Celtic Phoenix’ ad in the Irish Times.

Meanwhile

‘Is Eoghan Murphy the right person for the job? I don’t know’ (Sunday Independent)

Screen Shot 2016-06-14 at 16.54.48

A report by Paul Sweeney, of TASC, in December

Paul Sweeney writes:

The leak in [yesterday’s] Irish Times that the Taoiseach has written to Mr Juncker, President of the EU Commisson, on the need for greater investment in Ireland is welcome, but appears somewhat disingeneous.

His letter appears to quote the report published by TASC last December which ponted out that Ireland’s level of investment was at its lowest level ever and was the lowest in the Union.

Mr Kenny said investment in infrastructure in Ireland was at its “lowest level for many years, and also represents the lowest level of any member state at present” – the two points emphasised by TASC.

That Mr Kenny has now recognised this is welcome, but it was his government which set out the investment plan last autumn which proposed to cut investment even lower than the lowest level ever, from 1.8% of GDP in 2013 to 1.7% in 2016.

…So has Mr Kenny finally woken up to the need for greater direct public investment? For example, is he seeking permission from Europe to directly invest some of the banks’ proceeds in Ireland, instead of making the error of using them to accellerate repayment of the national debt?

It seems not. He appears to be looking for new ways of avoiding direct public investment and to increase private investment in public infrastructure. It seems he wants leeway to have more Public Private Partnerships, even though they cost more in the long run and take much longer to execute, than direct public funding.

“Mr Kenny said he felt sufficiently concerned about how Eurostat was classifying public-private partnerships – widely used to fund infrastructural projects – that he felt the need to ‘raise the matter at the highest political level’”, according to the Irish Times.

But he also said, “We are also acutely conscious of the constraints and obligations of the fiscal rules, and the need to broaden sources of investment as widely as possible within those constraints and obligations.”

Clearly using some of the bank proceeds for investment is not even being discussed. The flavour still is “broader sources of finance.”

Taoiseach appears to seek Increased Public Investment, as does OECD (TASC)

Kenny concerned by hazard posed from EU investment rules (Irish Times, June 13, 2016)

H/T: Rory Hearne

Google has spent $1 billion (€750m) buying a 2.4 acre plot in central London where, the company told Reuters, it plans to build a new million square-foot UK HQ by 2016. Construction starts later this year and the facility is due for completion in 2016.

“This is a big investment by Google,” said Matt Britin, Google’s VP for Northern and Central Europe. “We’re committing further to the UK — where computing and the web were invented. It’s good news for Google, for London, and for the UK.”

And a nice tax move for the enormously cash rich company whose massive property investment means the money doesn’t have to be sent back to the parent company in the US where tax would be due.

likecool/dvice

Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan has been thinking about them. And not in a nice way, either.

Banks will have to be more aggressive in repossessing properties in the buy-to let sector, the Governor of the Central Bank Patrick Honohan warned while ruling out a widespread debt forgiveness programme as unaffordable.

Speaking this evening in Limerick, Mr Honohan stressed that although public policy should aim to avoid the repossession of family homes “where this is unnecessary” when it came to investment properties “there are many circumstances in which there is less reason to be inhibited about repossessing”.

Call For ‘Aggressive’ Action On Buy-To-Let Repossessions (Irish Times)

(Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland)

FOREIGN DIRECT investment companies are attracted to Ireland because the Irish are a happy people, Minister for the Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Jimmy Deenihan has claimed.

Speaking at the launch of the Science Gallery’s programme for 2012 in Trinity College Dublin, Mr Deenihan said the disposition of the Irish people was an attractive part of the package offered to foreign direct investment along with the 12.5 per cent corporation tax.

“We are a happy people, and generally a sincere people. For some people, who are looking at foreign direct investment, that is a consideration,” he said.

Mr Deenihan said the Irish were a philosophical race and so many people took the attitude that things that happened were the “will of God”. “I have seen so many people say that over the years and that’s our disposition and it is a very good one to have,” he said.

Happy now?

Foreign firms fall for charm of ‘happy’ Irish (Irish Times)

(Screengrab of Irish Jam via BMD)