Gavin Sheridan – Page 41

Taoiseach’s diary 2001

As part of an ongoing process. The appointments diary of then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern for the year 2001. Redactions marked ‘A’ are so because the department believes them to be “personal information” as defined in Section 28 of the FOI act. Entries marked ‘B’ relate to the Taoiseach’s private papers as a member of the Oireachtas. Regards ‘B’ redactions – the cover letter from the FOI officer states “Section 46 of the Act states, inter alia, that the Act does not apply to records relating to any of the private papers of a member of the Oireachtas and as such I consider that the Act does not apply to these entries.”

Previously:
Taoiseach diary April 1998 to March 1999
Taoiseach diary April to December 1999
Taoiseach diary 2000
Taoiseach diary 2005
Taoiseach diary 2006
Taoiseach diary May 2008 to May 2009

Taoiseach’s diary 2000

As part of an ongoing process. The appointments diary of then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern for the year 2000.

Previously:
Taoiseach diary April 1998 to March 1999
Taoiseach diary April to December 1999
Taoiseach diary 2005
Taoiseach diary 2006
Taoiseach diary May 2008 to May 2009

CIE fuel consumption breakdown

I’ve inserted some of the data I received from CIE into a spreadsheet. This has thrown up a problem. The totals given by CIE don’t appear to add up to the actual total.

Spreadsheet

The difference is over 20 million litres of diesel. I will be contacting CIE to see if they wish to correct their totals.

CIE fuel consumption 2005 to 2009

A very long time ago I sent a request to Coras Iompar Eireann, the operator of Dublin Bus, Iarnrod Eireann and Bus Eireann seeking information on how much fuel they consumed, its cost, and the estimated carbon footprint. They have replied, finally, to my request.

In the five years from 2005 to 2009, CIE consumed 546,257,128 litres of diesel. This equates to approximately 1.747 billion kilos of carbon (at 3.2kg per litre), or 1,747 metric kilotonnes. The numbers are broken down as follows:

Dublin Bus consumed 168,940,369 litres from 2005 to 2009 (31% of total)
Iarnrod Eireann consumed 234,874,458 litres from 2005 to 2009 (43% of total)
Bus Eireann consumed 142,442,301 litres from 2005 to 2009 (26% of total)

The carbon dioxide emissions amount to over five times the mass of the Empire State Building.

CIE refused to give costs information on the basis of commercial sensitivity. The process of getting this information was an interesting one in itself and I will write more on this and give a further analysis of the data soon.

Ireland quarterly deficit hits -36.51% of GDP

I’ve graphed some of the Eurostat data mentioned here. Brian Lucey reckons this means that our deficit for 2010 as a whole (as oppose to the quarterly figure) will be around -20%. Have we turned a corner?

Phone numbers

A reader has commented that coincidentally perhaps, the phone numbers of Ivor Callely and his son Ronan are almost identical. According to his Facebook page, Ronan Callely’s number is 086 2571489. According to the Oireachtas documents, Ivor Callely’s number is 087 2571489 – a one digit difference which applies usually when your provider is different. Curious.

Callely phone claims – original documents

Luke Byrne of the Mail on Sunday, who penned the original story related to the mobile phone expense claims of Senator Ivor Callely on Sunday, has been kind enough to pass on the original documents received from his FOI request. I have run an OCR process on the documents, and combined them into one PDF.

A declaration on the claims form states:

I HEREBY CERTIFY THAT THE EXPENSES CLAIMED HAVE BEEN ACTUALLY AND NECESSARILY INCURRED BY ME IN RELATION TO MY MEMBERSHIP OF DAIL EIREANN AND THE PARTICULARS FURNISHED HEREIN ARE IN ALL RESPECTS TRUE.

This is signed and dated by Mr Callely on each claim form.

The company on the headed paper, which gives its company number at the bottom of the document (150878), put out a notice in February 1994 that a liquidator was being appointed. You can read the company’s submissions on the CRO website. The company was subsequently dissolved. The claim forms were stamped by the Oireachtas on November 21 and 22, 2007. Another document is the certificate showing that the company was wound up by the Examiner’s Office.

Here are the documents:

NAMA reply

With the help of a good friend, the reply to the preliminary decision of the Commissioner for Environmental Information is complete. It runs to over 6,000 words, and I believe argues strongly that the Commissioner’s preliminary decision is entirely incorrect, erring both in law and in fact.

You can read it here:

NAMA Preliminary Decision Reply

HSE national FOI logs 2007 to May 2010

As part of an ongoing process of seeking what people ask for under FOI, here are the FOI requests logs for HSE (National) from January 1, 2007 to May 31, 2010, inclusive. Each year is in a different sheet, which you can change at the bottom.

Google Spreadsheet

Anglo Irish Asset Finance PLC

I’ve been leafing through the company accounts of several interesting Anglo subsidiaries. The numbers would make you ill.

Anglo Irish Asset Finance PLC stands out (AIAF for short). The company directors have changed somewhat, but for most of the relevant period the directors were:

Brian Linehan (Not the Minister for Finance)
Gordon Parker (FG Parker)
J Brydie (Jim/James Brydie)
TP Walsh (Thomas Walsh)

AIAF, under cashflows, in the 12 months to September 30, 2008, had losses before tax of £116,805,450.That was before the bank guarantee.

In the 15 month period between September 30, 2008 and December 31, 2009, the company had losses before tax of £1,197,670,982, or almost £1.2 billion. (In an interim management report in March 2009, the company reported a loss of £972m, including £613m on a Yen deal that went badly wrong). The majority of the £1.2bn loss was from UK investments, £88m was from Mainland Europe. The company had £5.34bn in liabilities up to the end of 2009. Interest and similar income fell from £399m in the 2008 period, to £290m in the 2009 period. Trading losses would make your brain melt. In the 2008 fiscal year it lost £99m in “trading losses”, in the 2009 fiscal year it lost £613m. Provisions for impairment went from £124m to £974m in the 2008 to 2009 period.

Now for derivatives – and as far as I can tell, the taxpayer still holds these.

As of December 31, 2009, AIAF held £2,148,360,000 total derivative financial instruments, of which £1.74bn was interest rate swaps.

AIAF held £3.16bn in loans classified for sale to NAMA at year end 2009. Less provisions for impairment this is £2.3bn. But it was the £3.16bn that was designated on December 31.

Share capital was increased from 300,000,000 shares in 2008 to 3,300,000,000 in 2009. On November 18, 2008, 1,000,000,000 ordinary were issued at par for a consideration of £1 billion and subscnbed by CDB (U K ) Limited, the parent company, thereby increasing ordinary share capital by £1,000,000,000 to £1,220,000,000. Note 28 states:

In order to further strengthen the capital position of the Company, on 18th November 2008, the issued ordinary share capital of the Company was increased by £1,000,000,000. In addition AIBC agreed to the irrevocable write off of £200m of the intercompany loan between AIBC and the Company which has further increased the capital of the Company through the creation of a capital reserve of £200m.

Note 29 is on NAMA (in relation to AIAF’s parent in Dublin):

The transfer of assets to NAMA is a fundamental aspect of AlBC’s restructunng process. AIBC estimates that NAMA will acquire land and development loans and certain associated loans with a value of approximately £3,166m on a gross loan basis (i e before taking account of £864m of loan loss provisions) from the Company. AIBC and the Company have no control over the quantity of eligible assets that NAMA will acquire or over the valuation NAMA will place on those assets. NAMA has not confirmed to AIBC or the Company the total value of eligible assets it expects to purchase or the consideration it will pay in respect to those assets.

NAMA appear to have applied the following (Note 29):

Total assets as classified for sale, neither impaired or past due: £451m
Past due but not impaired: £176m
Impaired: £2.538bn

So let’s put it this way. NAMA have said that 80% of the loans are impaired as of December 2009. And 87% of all loans (either impaired or not) are related to just three sectors, retail (10%), residential development (37) and commercial development (40%).