Access to Information Updates
These are costs related to Irish Parliamentary Association (IPA) travel for 2009. Released by the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission.
These are costs related to Council of Europe, OSCE, PACE, Western European Union, EuroMed and EMPA. The total is €108,671.80. The data includes trips by Frank Fahey, Ivor Callely, Pat Breen, Joe O’Reilly, Terry Leyden and Cecilia Keaveney.
As part of an ongoing process. The appointments diary of then HSE chief executive Brendan Drumm for 2008 and 2009.
This is a breakdown of British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly costs for 2009. It totals at €20,656.41.
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In July a statutory instrument (S.I. No. 358/2010) was signed by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, bringing a company called Bank of Ireland (UK) plc under the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Act 2008, otherwise known as the bank gurantee scheme. This is curious on a number of levels, and could be entirely innocent, but is nonetheless worth looking a little into.
Bank of Ireland (UK) plc was incorporated on September 17, 2009. Richie Boucher was appointed a director in March 2010, and it appears to have commenced business on April 1. Its most recent director appointment was on July 14, 2010, when Laurel Powers Freeling, the former chief executive of Marks and Spencers, was appointed.
Five days after the appointment of Freeling and a Robert Walker, Brian Lenihan signed the SI that brought Bank of Ireland (UK) plc under the guarantee. A number of questions arise, which I believe are fair to ask, given the level of support given by the State to Bank of Ireland.
What is the purpose of Bank of Ireland (UK) plc?
Why is Bank of Ireland establishing a new UK company at a time when it is supposed to be increasing lending in Ireland?
What is the renumeration of the directors of Bank of Ireland (UK) plc?
As I said, the purpose of establishing the company might be entirely run of the mill – I’m just posing the question.
Deposits from Irish Private Sector by category. Central Bank data. Notice the rapid fall in growth of deposits from November to December 2006, and the subsequent rapid fall. Anyone know where the repo stats for 2008 are gone?
Right, it’s back properly now. Honest.
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P O’Neill with another thing the press misssed or miss-interpreted.
In short, the Irish example of debt reduction as cited by M. Trichet is dodgy. Yes there was debt reduction, but it wasn’t done by spending cuts, it wasn’t sustainable, and its achievement was symptomatic of deeper structural (and political) problems in Ireland. And we’ve leave that parenthetical comment for a long in-progress future post on Irish political economy.
Karl Whelan has one too.
Economist obituary to the piper who invaded Normandy. Via John Naughten.
ANY reasonable observer might have thought Bill Millin was unarmed as he jumped off the landing ramp at Sword Beach, in Normandy, on June 6th 1944. Unlike his colleagues, the pale 21-year-old held no rifle in his hands. Of course, in full Highland rig as he was, he had his trusty skean dhu, his little dirk, tucked in his right sock. But that was soon under three feet of water as he waded ashore, a weary soldier still smelling his own vomit from a night in a close boat on a choppy sea, and whose kilt in the freezing water was floating prettily round him like a ballerina’s skirt.
Gerard Cunningham; Changing times.
Anthony Sheridan; why Ivor Callely scares the body politic.
Veronica McDermott on Irishelection.com; The lucky 11. On the taoiseach’s Seanad nominees and Ivor Callely.
Splintered Sunrise; The Birmingham Three, the plot continues to thicken.
Sunday Times political correspondent, Stephen O’Brien, provides some facts…
The government plans to put thousands of dole claimants to work in their communities and cut off welfare payments from those who refuse to take up the jobs. Eamnon Ó Cuív the social protection minister, will employ up to 10,000 dole recipients over the next four months, providing childcare, working with sports clubs and on environmental tasks, such as improving forest and mountain walkways as part of a bid to break the cycle of long term unemployment and to disrupt the black economy.
The follow-up by RTÉ refines it slightly…
The participants are expected to work in areas like after school services, childcare, services for older people, environmental projects and in the improvement of sports and tourist facilities.
The proposals would see participants work 19.5 hours a week and receive around €210 in return.
To begin with you have to wonder how the department of social protection will find several thousand dole recipients with the garda clearance, qualities and abilities to work in after school services, childcare and services for older people within four weeks. As people have said today already, there is a six-month wait for Garda clearance at present. Anyway, that’s logistical question, it doesn’t consider the social impact of workfare itself. Continue reading “'Work for dole'”
As previously mentioned I am converting expenses data sent to me in PDF form back into spreadsheets. 2009 is the first. You might notice some missing data in the last few rows of the 13,388 claims – I will remedy this later this evening – sometimes the conversion process is a bit wonky. The database contains €1.65m of expense claims for 2009.
You can look at the data on Socrata or download it from there
This is the same figures broken down by payee, in order of size of total expense claim:
And the same under the mileage heading:
And a bar chart showing mileage claimants:
And a pie chart showing in what categories expenses are claimed:
And the spreadsheet for categories: