European Central Bank president Mario Draghi has said the Eurosystem offered "extraordinary" assistance to the Irish banking system in recent years, the Irish Times reported. Mr Draghi said the body would continue to discuss with Irish authorities "what may be achievable" with respect to the promissory note on the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), the former Anglo Irish Bank. He was responding to a letter on January 7th from Fianna Fail spokesman on finance Michael McGrath in which he urged some progress on a deal.

DIY chain B&Q Ireland Ltd has been placed into interim examinership following a hearing at the High Court Thursday, the Irish Times reported. This gives the company protection against its creditors for up to 100 days while the DIY chain attempts to restructure the business and formulate a survival plan to put the business back on a viable financial footing. Under a proposed restructuring, stores in Athlone and Waterford – which employ 92 staff between them - would close. B&Q will also attempt to substantially improve its rental agreements with landlords.

Irish banks are still dragging their feet when it comes to dealing with mortgage arrears, the Central Bank has warned. In its first quarterly bulletin of the year, the bank said lenders were not doing enough to tackle “the long-term nature” of arrears, the Irish Times reported. While acknowledging that more debt resolution measures were being rolled out by banks, the Central Bank said the level of implementation, through either debt restructuring or loan recovery, was far from adequate.

Ireland's banking recovery could yet be derailed by its international creditors, Reuters reported. The European Central Bank's refusal so far to give Dublin any relief on the 30-billion euro cost of bailing out Anglo Irish Bank is a major setback for government ambitions to exit an EU-IMF bailout this year and give the euro zone its first post-crisis success story. The failure to agree a deal on Anglo Irish also overshadows the country's banks.

A provisional trial date has been set for January next year in the case of three former executives of Anglo Irish Bank in connection with financial irregularities at the institution, the Irish Times reported. The bank’s former chairman Seán FitzPatrick, former finance director Willie McAteer and former managing director of the bank in Ireland Pat Whelan appeared before the Circuit Court in Dublin yesterday in front of Judge Mary Ellen Ring.

Euro zone finance ministers late last night called for an examination of whether the maturity of Ireland’s rescue loans from the EFSF temporary bailout fund should be extended, the Irish Times reported. The move came ahead of a meeting today of all 27 EU ministers at which Michael Noonan will ask for a similar examination of the maturity of loans form the European Financial Stability Mechanism, a separate fund run by the European Commission.

Investigators probing alleged fraud at the failed Anglo Irish Bank since early 2009 asked on Thursday for another three years to conclude their case and were told by a Dublin High Court judge to wrap it up in the next year, Reuters reported. The Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) and the police are investigating events leading up to the collapse of scandal-hit Anglo Irish Bank and have so far brought charges forward in two of the five strands to their case.

Spanish and Irish funding costs continued to ease at debt auctions Thursday, with investors increasingly confident that both euro-zone countries may be over the worst of their financial problems, The Wall Street Journal reported. Spain sold its maximum targeted €4.5 billion ($5.98 billion) worth of bonds amid signs that it doesn't currently need financial support offered by the European Central Bank to meet its funding needs.

Ireland’s new Insolvency Service hopes to begin accepting applications from borrowers seeking debt relief in the second quarter of this year, its head Lorcan O’Connor said yesterday, the Irish Times reported. While there is a “large backlog” of potential cases “it may be a number of months down the road” before the bulk emerges, he told a Grant Thornton-organised seminar on the new personal insolvency legislation. Mr O’Connor said there would be a public register which would show who applied to the new service.

Households continue to save an increasing share of their incomes, new figures show. In the third quarter of last year Irish households saved 16 per cent of total disposable income, according to Central Statistics Office data published yesterday, the Irish Times reported. The new figures, which have been adjusted for seasonal factors by statisticians for the first time, show that the savings rate in the third quarter was the second highest since figures were first compiled in 2002. High savings rates are a feature of economies which have suffered collapsed property prices.