The European Central Bank placed an “inappropriate” debt burden on Irish citizens in 2010 when it refused to force bond investors to share losses from troubled banks, a parliamentary committee report on the country’s banking collapse said on Wednesday. The report supports the view, widely held in Ireland, that the E.C.B. dictated policy to the government in a way that punished taxpayers while sparing investors who owned bonds issued by Irish banks. The central bank, which is based in Frankfurt, routinely denies that it meddles in politics or tells eurozone governments what to do.

Weak trading in the run-up to Christmas, when sales collapsed by a quarter compared to December 2014, spurred the decision yesterday by Hilco Capital to place Xtra-vision into provisional liquidation with the loss of 580 jobs, the Irish Times reported. The Xtra-vision brand is likely to survive via an online business, however, while its DVD vending machine business is also set to continue. Hilco’s HMV music store chain may also seek to buy back a small number of the 83 Xtra-vision stores and reopen them under separate ownership.

There was a 70% increase in the number of permanent solutions agreed through the Insolvency Service of Ireland last year, RTÉ.ie reported. The ISI said the recent removal of the banks' veto over proposed arrangements involving debtors' homes has already resulted in financial institutions reversing some of their own rejection decisions. Lenders overturned four out of 12 rejection decisions which were appealed last month. There were 1,700 permanent solutions for debtors agreed last year, a 70% increase on 2014.

Troubled oil and gas company Petroceltic has confirmed it has been given more breathing by its banks today as it continues its search for a buyer, the Irish Times reported. The publicly quoted exploration company is in breach of its senior bank facilities, but has received a number of waivers on loan repayments from its lenders. The latest waiver, which expired on Friday, has been extended until the end of the month.

An appeal by the Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland (MIBI) against a High Court ruling that it must pay out on outstanding claims following the collapse of the Setanta Insurance Company in 2014 has opened before the Court of Appeal, the Irish Times reported. The MIBI is appealing against Mr Justice John Hedigan’s finding that it was liable to pay out in respect of claims against persons who were insured with Setanta at the time of its liquidation. The case has important implications for motor insurance premiums as well as parties involved in claims concerning Setanta.

The Revenue Commissioners secured 27 criminal convictions for serious tax evasion and fraud in 2015, according to figures released Thursday, the Irish Times reported. Those prosecutions were on top of 2,063 summary convictions, or lesser charges, for the non-filling of tax returns and customs offences. Headline figures for the year show the service conducted more than 461,000 individual audits and compliance investigations which yielded €642.5 million.

The Irish Mortgage Holders’ Organisation (IMHO) has proposed that banks, insolvency practitioners, the Government, regulators, and various other State agencies and debt advisory groups come together to try and formulate a big-ticket solution for long-term mortgage arrears.

The number of registered unemployed workers in Spain has seen the biggest drop for at least a decade while joblessness in Ireland has hit its lowest level since 2008, when the country was about to enter a prolonged financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. The Spanish figures provide a boost to the economic record of acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy as he tries to form a government following an inconclusive general election.

Fianna Fáil has said the Government’s failure to deal with the “spiralling arrears crisis” in the sub-prime mortgage market is “disastrous” as the owners of such loans are amongst “the most aggressive in the market” at seeking court ordered repossessions, the Irish Times reported. New figures provided by the Central Bank indicate that 20,338 mortgage accounts issued by sub-prime lenders were in arrears of more than 90 days at the end of September 2015. This compares to 19,935 at the end of December 2014.

New quarterly figures from the Central Bank show mortgage debt declined by €61 million to €60.3 billion during the third quarter of 2015, the Irish Times reported. The annual rate of decline in loans for home purchase was 0.8 per cent at end-September 2015, following a 1.4 per cent decline at end-June. Fixed-rate mortgages increased by €839 million, or 14.6 per cent, during the third quarter to stand at €6.6 billion.