Tag Archives: irish times

Saturday’s Irish Times

In reference to your obituary column in Saturday’s Irish Times: poster-boy banker with semi-detached relationship with ethics, as you state, receives four written columns.

While a life devoted to serving the Irish people with personal courage receives two written columns.

Tom Meaghar,
Athlone

Meanwhile..

Sadly we don’t need Global Trends 2021 to tell us what we have become. Your obituaries page on the same day does the job with chilling efficiency.

Lavishly illustrated with a roguish photograph, exuding his “clubbable (whatever that means?) relaxed, warm bonhomie”, Seánie Fitzpatrick, disgraced banker and wrecker of homes, businesses and lives, dominates three quarters of a page. Pushed into the margins is the “significant political impact both sides of the Border” figure of courageous and diligent Austin Currie.

Lunatics and asylums come to mind, anyone?

Kieran Fagen,
Killiney.

Irish Times Letters

This morning.

Via The Irish Times:

With 3,726 new cases of Covid-19 confirmed in the State in the last 24 hours, it is clear that the epidemiological trends are still going in the wrong direction…

…Unlike previous surges, however, this one is not being met with new restrictions on social and economic life…

…The difference, of course, is that more than 90 per cent of the population is now fully vaccinated against Covid-19. That has placed a protective shield around the community, substantially lowering the death rate and providing very strong protection against serious illness.

In recent weeks, however, the Delta variant has begun to pierce that shield. The jabs continue generally to provide protection against the worst health outcomes, according to the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (Niac), but it has been well-documented that their ability to prevent infection and mild disease wanes over time. This was observed in Israel, where a third-shot booster programme was rapidly introduced. We also know that vaccinated people can transmit the virus….

…the situation will get worse before it gets better. If Israel’s experience is replicated here, a large-scale booster programme with high take-up levels (perhaps encouraged by a three-jab rule for admission to indoor hospitality) will depress the infection curve substantially towards the end of the year. In the meantime, however, hospital admissions and deaths will rise at least through this month. The question now is whether the health system can hold out until vaccines can reinstate that protective shield.

Anyone?

Reinstating the protective shield (editorial, Irish Times)

RollingNews

Meanwhile…

This afternoon.

Via The Irish Times:

Liam Kavanagh, managing director of The Irish Times, said the agreement with Google was “a welcome acknowledgement of the value of trusted news sources in modern democracies”.

“It means titles in The Irish Times Group have more support to provide high-quality, independent journalism to a wider audience,” he said.

The Irish Times Group has agreed terms with Google which will allow access to content from all titles in the group available through Google News Showcase when it launches in the Irish market later this year.

Google signs deal with Irish Times and other Irish partners to promote news (Irish Times)

Meanwhile…

Google shifted more than $75.4 billion (€63 billion) in profits out of the Republic using the controversial “double-Irish” tax arrangement in 2019, the last year in which it used the loophole.

The technology giant availed of the tax arrangement to move the money out of Google Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company via interim dividends and other payments. This company was incorporated in Ireland but tax domiciled in Bermuda at the time of the transfer.

The move allowed Google Ireland Holdings to escape corporation tax both in the Republic and in the United States where its ultimate parent, Alphabet, is headquartered. The holding company reported a $13 billion pretax profit for 2019, which was effectively tax-free, the accounts show.

A year earlier, Google Ireland Holdings paid out dividends of €23 billion, having recorded turnover of $25.7 billion.

Google has used the double Irish loophole to funnel billions in global profits through Ireland and on to Bermuda, effectively putting them beyond the reach of US tax authorities.

Companies exploiting the double Irish put their intellectual property into an Irish-registered company that is controlled from a tax haven such as Bermuda.

Ireland considers the company to be tax-resident in Bermuda, while the US considers it to be tax-resident here. The result is that when royalty payments are sent to the company, they go untaxed – unless or until the money is eventually sent home to the US parent.

Google used ‘double-Irish’ to shift $75.4bn in profits out of Ireland (Arthur Beesley, Irish Times, April 17, 2021)

From top: Outside Leo Varadkar’s home on Sunday; This morning’s Irish Times

KN writes:

If I wasn’t so completely trusting of the guards and the Irish Times I might have thought this was all a bit of a set- up done on the cheap.

Having being at all the marches to date, I’ve never heard any homophobic comments or chants or placards from those in attendance. It wouldn’t be tolerated. And the stuff I’ve seen from the grainy footage of the protest on Sunday would not have been tolerated by anyone I know at these marches.

This group, ‘We Are Sovereign People’ – whose crap I condemn, by the way – have no online presence, no spokesperson and never publicise their protests, which appear to consist of hanging outside ministers’ houses on Sundays, and provoking the inevitable twitter backlash. Why would they repeat the same failed formula that damages their supposed cause?

Some unnamed members then pledge to the crime correspondent of a national newspaper that they plan future protests outside GPs’ houses. What kind of group is this?

Anyone?

Protesters who targeted Varadkar’s home plan to focus on GPs next (irish Times)

 

This morning.

Via Irish Times:

When The Irish Times invited people not taking the Covid-19 vaccine to explain their reasons, we received more than 250 responses inside two days…

…These readers’ statements are analysed by two doctors: Dr Anne Moore, vaccinologist at University College Cork; and Dr Eoghan de Barra, consultant in infectious diseases at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital and senior lecturer in the Department of International Health and Tropical Medicines at the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland….

Why we’re not getting the Covid-19 vaccine: Irish Times readers share their reasons (Irish Times)

Meanwhile…

‘…We see the duty of care most possess for others play out in mask wearing too: a practice that offers little protection to the wearer, but is designed for the collective benefit of everyone around.

Compliance with mask wearing in Ireland has remained high, according to research from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). And even as mandatory mask wearing in the UK ends, they still remain ubiquitous on public transport and in supermarkets. It seems the message that we wear masks for each other’s benefit was not a hard one to grasp.

And though the government can issue mask-wearing directives all it likes, it cannot easily engender a sense of comity that sees people continue to wear them even when they do not have to. A roster of rules backed by the threat of sanctions can get us some of the way there, but it seems at the core of all of this is a shared ethical standpoint. That is something no cabinet could ever legislate for…’

Good grief.

Covid crisis could result in a shared ethical stance (Finn McRedmond, Irish Times)

Yesterday’s Irish Times’ advertorial for the Chinese Communist Party

This morning.

Via Irish Times Letters:

I resent the publication of the Chinese government ad in yesterday’s Irish Times.

Comparing China to Ireland is an insult.

They talk about looking after the “wellbeing” of the Chinese people and the development of the country.

Is forced sterilisation looking after people’s wellbeing?

Is imprisoning protesters democratic?

Is silencing that optician who broke the scandal of coronavirus democratic? I think not.

I am saddened that the Irish Times published this propaganda, money is not everything.

Tina Dermody,

County Wicklow

Irish Times Letters

Meanwhile…

The advertorial talks about the CCP’s commitment to the “wellbeing of the Chinese people”. Tell that to the millions of Uighurs in China’s west who have been terrorised, imprisoned or surveilled and are having their culture erased. Or speak to feminist activists who have been jailed or forced into exile for calling out gender discrimination.

Or consider the lawyers who have been imprisoned for taking on human rights cases. Even Marxist activists have been detained for supporting more worker’s rights. The party indeed may be committed to “wellbeing”, but the party gets to define what wellbeing means.

China’s self-penned praise calls for dose of scepticism (, Irish Times)

Yesterday: A Great Bunch Of Lads

Thanks Lilly

 

 

Tanaiste Leo Varadkar

This morning.

Via Irish Times Letters:

As seen in the Monday edition of The Irish Times.

Page 1: Leo Varadkar pronounces his wise counsel on the purchase of the new National Maternity Hospital site.

Page 1: In the blurb for page 3, we see that Leo Varadkar urges the DUP to honour agreements.

Page 2: Views on travel abroad: “Varadkar says Government has decided to diverge from Holohan’s travel advice.”

Page 3: “Varadkar urges DUP to ‘honour its commitments’ on Irish language’’.

Page 4: Varadkar’s concerns and “intimations” over site for new National Maternity Hospital.

Page 4: “Pandemic must leave positive legacy, says Tánaiste.”

Page 4: Varadkar’s Ard Fheis speech: “Varadkar dances a leftward shimmy to pair Fine Gael’s old favourites.”

I did check out the Sport section for Mr Varadkar’s tips for the Southwell and Ballinrobe races but, sadly, nothing doing.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan also get a fleeting mention in some of these articles.

But no mention at all of the leader of the Opposition, who happens to be the leader of what the polls consider to be the most popular party in the country – north and south.

How come?

Is mise,

Caomhin O Seanain

Anyone?/FIGHT!

Irish Times Letters

RollingNews