Ireland

The EU Commission has urged the Government to confront a re-emergence of lax lending standards in the banking system, warning in a new report that it sees fresh signs of bad practice in some lenders, the Irish Times reported. The commission expressed concern about the banks, which have received more than €60 billion in State aid, as it said the proceeds of the deal to scrap the Anglo Irish Bank promissory note scheme should be used to pay down debt.

The behaviour of liquidators is set to come under greater scrutiny from the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement as the number of company failures remains at a high level, the Irish Times reported. New ODCE director Ian Drennan said yesterday he would consider prosecutions in cases where liquidators failed to comply with their statutory reporting obligations. Liquidators of companies that are in insolvent liquidation are obliged under the Company Law Enforcement Act 2001 to report to the office on the company’s demise.

The number of people with Irish addresses applying for bankruptcy in either England or Wales has risen significantly, according to figures from Britain’s Insolvency Service, the Irish Times reported. Last year, there were 75 bankruptcy cases involving debtors who gave an address in the Republic, compared with 28 in 2011 and just 15 in 2010. The figures from the Insolvency Service, however, do not necessarily indicate the number of debtors who have relocated from Ireland to the UK specifically to obtain a bankruptcy order.

Ireland's new insolvency laws will help distressed home-loan borrowers, but also help Irish taxpayers regain some of the huge sums the country has pumped into its banks during the country's deep financial crisis, Irish central bank head Patrick Honohan said Thursday, Dow Jones Newswires reported. Dublin last month detailed a new so-called Insolvency Service of Ireland agency, the centerpiece of new debt-solution laws that the government says will help distressed borrowers strike deals with their banks.

Ireland’s 850 hotels have aggregate debts of €6.7 billion and about 300 of them are in financial difficulty. These are the key points of a report on the health of the sector jointly commissioned by AIB and the Irish Hotels Federation, the Irish Times reported. The report also found that 54 per cent of hotels increased their turnover in 2012, while two-thirds of the 111 respondents expect tourism to improve here within the next three years.

The rising number of bad loans – both mortgage loans and those to businesses – and the reconfiguring of the banks so that they can lend profitably to support growth are the two main challenges to the Irish economy, according to the Central Bank’s second annual Macro-Financial Review, the Irish Times reported. The report, which assesses the strengths and weaknesses of all areas of the Irish financial system, states that the greatest single risk to the domestic economy is “the health of banking system and its ability to support the real economy”.

Lawyers for Ulster Bank have applied to a US court seeking to intervene in the bankruptcy proceedings of property developer Sean Dunne so the bank can proceed with its own bankruptcy proceedings against him in Ireland, the Irish Times reported. Ulster Bank said that Mr Dunne’s filing for bankruptcy in the US was the “culmination of extraordinary efforts” by him to “avoid the application of Irish law to an Irish national with respect to Irish debts and Irish assets”.

Central to the Government’s plan to deal with the legacy of personal debt is the creation of a new brand of insolvency professional, due to be registered from next summer. Depending on who you talk to, the Personal Insolvency Practitioner (PIP) will be jumping on the greatest legal gravy train for years, or embarking on a journey that will be far more hassle than it’s worth, the Irish Times reported. What’s certain, according to Lorcan O’Connor, director of the Insolvency Service of Ireland (ISI), is that “if we don’t get the practitioner bit right the system won’t work”.

Ireland’s EU-IMF bailout has been broadly successful, according to a new reports by a leading European thinktank, but risks remain that a second bailout will be required down the line, the Irish Times reported. In an analysis of the manner in which three euro area countries have been bailed out, the report concludes that Ireland’s bailout has been a success, Portugal’s a “potential” success and Greece’s a failure.

Ireland’s new insolvency service will pursue and prosecute borrowers fraudulently seeking debt forgiveness, said Lorcan O’Connor, head of the new agency, Bloomberg reported. Borrowers who lie about their finances face fines of as much as 100,000 euros ($130,000) or as long as five years in prison, according to laws which created the Insolvency Service of Ireland, known as the ISI, last month.