Ireland

The Irish State’s prospects of exiting its international bailout “depend importantly on the delivery of European commitments”, the International Monetary Fund has said, the Irish Times reported. Stressing the fragility of Ireland’s position, the fund’s staff said that financial market doubts about the State’s capacity to repay its debt “could easily re-emerge”. It also said risks to economic growth in Ireland “have profound adverse implications for debt sustainability”.

Permanent TSB has promised to increase its personal lending targets fivefold in 2013 to €450 million, up from €90 million last year, the Irish Times reported. Group chief executive Jeremy Masding said the bank’s lending capacity in key product areas such as mortgages, personal loans and credit cards would all increase this year. The bank plans to lend €350 million in mortgages, €100 million in personal lending, including car loans, and €5 million in new credit card finance.

Irish home values rose at the fastest pace in more than six years in November as the country recovered from Europe's worst real estate crash, Bloomberg News reported today. Residential property prices rose 1.1 percent from the previous month, the most since September 2006, the Central Statistics Office said in a statement today. Values fell 5.7 percent from a year earlier and are 49 percent below their 2007 peak, the statement showed. Read more.

Ireland expects to return fully to bond markets late next year but needs a deal on easing its bank debt to make sure it can successfully exit its international bailout, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said, the Irish Times reported. Speaking days before Ireland takes over the six-month EU presidency, Mr Kenny told Reuters he was confident an easing of repayment terms on the promissory notes that Ireland pumped mainly into the failed Anglo Irish Bank would be agreed by a March deadline.

Legislation on personal insolvency, which passed through the Dáil and Seanad today, is “the most radical and comprehensive reform of our insolvency and bankruptcy law and practice since the foundation of the State”, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has said, the Irish Times reported. The Personal Insolvency Bill 2012 will now be presented to President Michael D Higgins for signature. Mr Shatter warned banks and their public interest directors they will have to accept when a debt cannot be repaid, under the new law.

If European leaders expect Enda Kenny to set aside his awkward disputes with the international creditors funding Dublin’s €67.5bn bailout during his six months at the helm of the EU’s rotating presidency, the Irish prime minister has a message: he is not going to go quiet, the Financial Times reported. Ireland next year could become the first of the eurozone’s five bailout countries to emerge from a rescue programme if all goes according to schedule.

Property developer Paddy McKillen, who is engaged in a high-profile battle for control of three luxury London hotels, has cut €90 million off his debt held with the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation in recent months and is poised to reduce it by another €200 million, the Irish Times reported. Last night, Mr McKillen’s spokeswoman said the debt owed by companies controlled by him now stands at €550 million, some €50 million below where it stood during his High Court battle with the billionaire Barclay brothers in the middle of the year.

The mortgage debt crisis has spiralled out of control as a result of Government inaction, and a generation of Irish people are “locked into an endless battle of attrition with the banks”, a leading arrears advocacy group has claimed, the Irish Times reported. However, a group representing the banking industry dismissed suggestions that the crisis was worsening and welcomed what it described as the “slowing pace of increase” in arrears.

The billionaire Barclay brothers, who are battling property developer Patrick McKillen for control of three London luxury hotels, have made repeated bids to buy his €300 million in personal debt held by Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, the Irish Times reported. Under the three-part offer, the brothers would pay €150 million for IBRC-held debts on Mr McKillen’s stake in the Berkeley, Connaught and Claridge’s hotels; £50 million for security on other debts, along with offering to return to IBRC 90 per cent of all other debts recovered from Mr McKillen.

Trade unions are planning to hold a series of demonstrations and rallies around the country in February to call for a restructuring of Ireland’s debt, the Irish Times reported. Unions have argued that such a restructuring of debt is a prerequisite for economic recovery and a necessary condition for the maintenance of social cohesion. The proposed demonstrations will be timed to coincide with a meeting of the EU Council of Ministers and would take place in advance of the planned payment of €3.1 billion by the Government on the Anglo Irish Bank promissory note.