Ireland

Ireland’s national debt stood at €200.1 billion at the end of June, equating to 77.8 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), the Irish Times reported. New figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show this represented a €6.5 billion drop on the previous quarter, when debt represented more than 80 per cent of GDP. At the height of the financial crisis, Ireland’s debt was more than 120 per cent of GDP. Last year it fell from 105 per cent to 78 per cent as a result of a 26 per cent leap in GDP linked to the relocation of multinational assets here.

Administrators have been appointed to one of Northern Ireland’s best known women’s fashion retailers, which traded as Exhibit and employed about 100 people, the Irish Times reported. Cucco Retail Limited, which operated Exhibit, had 15 branches across the North and also two in the Republic – in Monaghan and Sligo towns. Joint administrators James Neill and Rachel Foster of HNH Group said a “general downturn in trading conditions, coupled with a significant change in consumer spending patterns over recent times” had significantly impact on Exhibit’s trade.

The number of people applying for debt relief during the third quarter of the year has more than doubled on last year, according to figures from the Insolvency Service of Ireland (ISI), the Irish Times reported. According to the ISI, there were 899 new applications in the third quarter of the year, more than twice the number received in 2015, and up by 22 per cent on the second quarter. More than three-quarters (78 per cent) of applications are for Personal Insolvency Arrangements (PIAs). These allow a person to return to solvency while staying in their home.

KBC Bank Ireland has been fined €1.4 million by the Central Bank for breaches of the Code of Practice on Lending to Related Parties, which may include directors, senior managers, significant shareholders of the bank and spouses or domestic partners, the Irish Times reported.

The Aughinish Alumina plant in Co Limerick staged a remarkable turnaround last year, recording a $14.4 million pretax profit after reporting a $12.1 million loss in 2014, the Irish Times reported. The main activity of the Shannon estuary-based refinery is the production and sale of alumina, which is extracted at the plant from bauxite and then exported outside the EU for further processing to aluminium metal.

The liquidators of Clerys say the winding up of the old Dublin department store is being delayed by legal proceedings and could take a further two years to complete. They also confirm they have made reports to the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) about the alleged conduct of its directors, the Irish Times reported.

More than €50 billion worth of non-performing bank loans (NPLs) remained in place in Ireland at the end of 2015, according to a stocktake published on Monday by the European Central Bank. This was in spite of €74 billion worth of face-value loans being transferred from Irish banks to the National Asset Management Agency for work-out after the crash, and a further €40 billion reduction in NPLs in the two years from the end of 2013.

AIB chief executive Bernard Byrne has said the bank has been “fixed” and is ready for a stock market initial public offering (IPO) whenever the Government decides to press the button, the Irish Times reported. In a speech delivered to the Leinster Society of Chartered Accountants, Mr Byrne said: “The role of the board and the executive for the last five or six years was to fix the bank. This is largely done. It’s now realistic for the State . . . to look at getting all of its capital back over a time period.

Ireland should set targets for government debt that are lower than those required by the European Union, and based on measures that more accurately reflect the true size of its economy, the head of the country’s central bank said. In a letter to Minister of Finance Michael Noonan ahead of the publication of his budget for 2017 later this year and made public Monday, Philip Lane also warned against assuming a recent surge in tax revenue from U.S. companies based in Ireland would be sustained.

The National Asset Management Agency (Nama) has re-appointed receivers to 36 companies and borrowers to ease the sale of their loans, the reported. The State agency published a series of official notices showing that it has appointed receivers to the firms, whose loans it took over from the banks in the wake of the property crash. As it stands, the individual receivers appointed to the companies and assets involved can only act for Nama. This could create difficulties should the agency want to sell the loans to a third party, who would then be entitled to call in the debt.