Ireland

The new Insolvency Service of Ireland, which will administer debt arrangements for people in financial trouble, has received almost 100 calls a day in its first week, RTÉ News reported. Its director Lorcan O'Connor said it had also received requests for more information booklets from some libraries and MABS offices that had run out of them. The new body will start accepting applications for debt arrangements by the end of June. Figures obtained from ISI show it has processed around 200 emails and there have been 15,000 visits to its website.

The businessman who took legal action in an attempt to halt the State’s decision to pay promissory notes to the banks has said he will challenge the plans to ‘name and shame’ individuals under new insolvency legislation, the Irish Times reported. David Hall of the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation said he had “hundreds” of clients, many of whom would be prepared to challenge the proposed publication of their names on any of the four planned registers.

Ireland should apply for a precautionary aid programme as part of its bailout exit strategy, Goodbody Stockbrokers said Tuesday, the Irish Times reported. In its quarterly economic commentary, the brokerage warned that while the country was on track to exit the troika programme later this year, significant vulnerabilities still existed. It cited the banking system and the recent rejection of the public sector pay deal as examples of potential "banana skins" which could frustrate the country's economic progress.

Public servants should move away from the current final salary pension scheme and all private sector workers should be forced to invest in private pensions under recommendations in a report on pension provision in Ireland, the Irish Times reported. In the most radical review of the Irish pension system to date, the OECD says the “simplest, less costly, and most effective way to increase coverage” is through the introduction of mandatory pension savings. It also suggests that “healthy” employers should not be allowed to walk away from pension liabilities.

The High Court has confirmed court protection for companies in the Barna Waste group, the largest domestic waste and recycling operator in the west of Ireland, employing 270 people, the Irish Times reported. Mr Justice Brian McGovern yesterday confirmed chartered accountant Neil Hughes as examiner to Bruscar Bhearna Teoranta and its subsidiary, Joe McLoughlin Waste Disposal Ltd. The court also heard it is hoped the companies will be sold in a relatively short period. Mr Justice Brian McGovern said he considered that confirming Mr Hughes as examiner was “the right thing to do”.

Minimum income guidelines for people entering the State’s new insolvency process have not been set in stone or at “subsistence level living or anywhere close to that”, the head of the agency overseeing the process has said, the Irish Times reported. Lorcan O’Connor of the Insolvency Service of Ireland (ISI) said the new guidelines would be flexible and would not see people’s finances being “micro-managed” by banks or new Personal Insolvency Practitioners (PIPS). However, he admitted many people would be forced to give up private health insurance, cars and holidays.

The Government expects Ireland’s borrowing requirement in the years to 2020 to be “significantly” reduced as a result of a new deal with the euro zone powers to postpone bailout loan repayments by an average of seven years, the Irish Times reported. Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said the arrangement should further reduce the interest the State pays to issue new debt to private investors as the Government plots its exit from the bailout at the end of this year. The deal was signed off yesterday in Dublin Castle at a meeting of EU ministers, which continues today.

Half of all lending to small and medium business is in arrears, according to the Central Bank. Fiona Muldoon, the director of credit institution supervision at the bank told a conference in Tralee yesterday that of the €50 billion lent to the sector by the domestic banks, some €25 billion was impaired and that the rate at which banks are facing up to the problem is unacceptable five years into the banking crisis, the Irish Times reported.

Bank of Ireland approved €1 billion of new loans to small and medium-sized enterprises in the first quarter of 2013, an increase of 25 per cent in the number of loans approved in the first three months of 2012, the Irish Times reported. The bank yesterday said the increase reflected a pick-up in credit demand from viable Irish SMEs and the bank’s initiatives to grow business-banking operations.

Banks dealing with people in mortgage arrears will be able to use the minimum income guidelines to be applied by the insolvency service to force distressed mortgage holders to dramatically curtail their spending on essential items such as medical care, it has been claimed, the Irish Times reported. Speaking last night, Fianna Fáil finance spokesman Michael McGrath called for the minimum income guidelines of the Insolvency Service of Ireland (ISI) to be published without delay.