KBC Bank Ireland recorded a €69 million loss after tax and charges for impaired loans for the three months to the end of June, the Irish Times reported. This was down from €96 million in same period last year. The Belgian lender said Irish loan impairments for the second quarter fell to €88 million from €99 million the previous quarter, and €136 million in the corresponding period last year. KBC said, however, it continues to see a “mild increase” in arrears.

Ratings agency Fitch has downgraded the ratings on six tranches of Irish residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), saying the absence of a credible threat of repossession helped drive up mortgage arrears, the Irish Times reported. “Arrears levels across the majority of transactions continue to worsen,” the agency said.

Irish government debt is still vulnerable to a Greek-style restructuring, Capital Economics said in a note, the Irish Times reported. The country still hasn’t fully regained the competitiveness lost inside the euro region and remains vulnerable to swings in the global economy, Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics, said. Debt levels, the housing market and a fragile banking sector may also hamper economic growth, Loynes said.

Bank of Ireland (BOI) is working on a strategy to avoid accruing an additional €445 million “step-up” payment to the Government, if it fails to pay back the State’s €1.78 billion holding of high-interest preference shares by next spring, the Irish Times reported. The issue is seen as a top priority within the bank, which yesterday reported its results for the first half of the year.

Seán Dunne’s adjudication as a bankrupt in Ireland marks the culmination in a five-month legal effort by one of his biggest lenders, Ulster Bank. The court’s ruling makes Dunne unique among the many former high-flying players of the boom-time property market – he is now bankrupt in two countries: Ireland, where he racked up debts of more than €700 million, and the United States, where he has lived for three years and is trying to start anew, the Irish Times reported.

Business group Ibec has reiterated its call on the Government to drop its plans to increase taxes by €500 million in October’s budget despite warnings to the contrary from Europe, the Irish Times reported. The call, in a report released by the organisation today, comes in the wake of a warning from European Stability Mechanism (ESM) managing director Klaus Regling that the Government must stick to its plans for a package of spending cuts and tax increases totalling €3.1 billion.

Ireland's Electricity Supply Board's unions are threatening to strike and are refusing to co-operate with further cost-cutting measures at the State-owned energy group as the row over the €1.7 billion pension shortfall continues, the Irish Times reported. The ESB group of unions claims the company is refusing to recognise the pension pot’s shortfall, which would leave current staff with just 4 per cent of their benefits should the plan be wound up.

Ireland is emphatically not a tax haven, according to the head of the tax division of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Irish Times reported. The comments from Pascal Saint-Amans come in the wake of accusations made in parliamentary committees in both the US and UK that large global companies use Ireland as part of their efforts to pay minimal amounts of corporation taxes in any jurisdiction.

The European Central Bank, European Commission and the International Monetary Fund said yesterday that Ireland's government has passed its second-to-last review, another step toward exiting the bailout program it agreed to in late 2010, the Wall Street Journal reported today. But while the government is confident that it can finance itself entirely from the international bond markets next year, talks continue on its access to precautionary credit lines from the euro zone, the IMF or both that it can fall back on should events outside the country interrupt its ability to sell bonds.

The head of the Irish insolvency service has said people applying for bankruptcy under the new insolvency provisions will not need to hire a solicitor or barrister to go to court, the Irish Examiner reported yesterday. Lorcan O'Connor expects the service to be up-and-running by next month - with the first debt-relief notice applying from September. O'Connor said that filing for bankruptcy in Irish will cost less than €750.