Monthly Archives: March 2012

‘SECRET’ top-up payments to disability charity chiefs on salaries up to €150,000 are being investigated by Department of Health officials. The officials are conducting a high-level probe into how the charities are spending €1.5bn in state funding.They now believe some senior executives are getting extra payments on top of their salaries.

…One leading charity, Rehab, made it clear that it did not welcome  [Health Minister] Dr Reilly’s request for information on its chief executive Angela Kerins’ package. Rehab chairman Brian Kerr told the minister that Ms Kerins’ remuneration was “not a matter in which you have a role” as her salary was funded from money raised from other commercial sources rather than out of the €36m the charity received from the State last year. He did, however, tell Dr Reilly that Ms Kerins received a salary of €234,000. But he denied she was getting bonus payments on top of that

 

Spare a thought for Angela though.

She made €400,000 in 2009.

Probe into top-ups for €150,000 Charity Chiefs (Eilish O’Regan, Irish Independent)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63a1vKJLN10&feature=player_embedded

Secretly shot video footage aired last night by Channel 4 shows what it said were Syrian patients being tortured by medical staff at a state-run hospital in Homs. The station said it had obtained footage  at the military hospital in Homs, filmed covertly by an employee and smuggled out by a French photojournalist identified only as “Mani.”

 

Secret Footage Showing ‘torture’ Of Syrians In Homs hospital (Telegraph)

McCain Calls For Airstrikes On Syria; US, Europe Ask Putin To Aid International Diplomacy (Washington Post)

No, not like that.

DUBLIN’S PRINCIPAL shopping street, Grafton Street, is to be repaved in grey and pink granite by Dublin City Council at a cost of approximately €2.5 million.
The work, which will see the surface of the entire street dug up and the existing red-brick paving removed, is expected to take about a year to complete. It is due to get under way next January.

The council says the Eurobrick paving, which was laid on the pedestrianised street in the mid- 1980s, has deteriorated badly to the point where it requires repair on an almost daily basis.

Grafton St repaving in pink and grey to cost €2.5m (Irish Times)

pic

 

At Broadsheet we use carefully-torn beermats from Grogan’s, emblazoned with fake names rendered in crayon. And we will continue to use them in the event of any so-called ‘meetings’.

In an interview with Dow Jones Newswires, a senior Irish official said there was “cautious optimism” that a complex deal to free the government from paying the next, EUR3.1 billion installment on the promissory notes will be struck by the end of this month.

The promissory notes were pledged to Anglo Irish Bank Corp., and Irish Nationwide Building Society–now jointly renamed the Irish Bank Resolution Corp–over three years ago. Based on those pledges, both banks qualified for emergency loans from the Central Bank of Ireland.

Rescheduling the notes would lengthen the time over which the central bank is repaid, and therefore needs the approval of the European Central Bank. Since last September, the Irish government has been talking to its bailout lenders–the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the ECB–on ways to delay or reschedule repayment of the notes.

“The technical discussions are well advanced,” the official said. “But there still needs to be a decision at the principal level [among the bailout lenders] whether this thing is going to work or not. Between now and the end of the month, when the next promissory note payment is due, will bring that to a head.”

Rescheduling payments on the notes would improve the government’s prospects of returning to the bond markets in 2013, when its EUR67.5 billion loan agreement with the EU and IMF ends.

But the senior official revealed that the government is seeking a wider deal to reduce the burden it incurred in bailing out its banks and ensuring they didn’t default on their debts, which could have toppled the already fragile European banking system.

 

INTERVIEW: Senior Irish Official Sees Wider Refinancing Of Bank Burden (Dow Jonesn