The fitness of senior executives and board members at the banks to perform their jobs will be reviewed by the Central Bank as part of sweeping changes to the vetting of bankers at Irish lenders, the Irish Times reported. The head of financial regulation at the Central Bank, Matthew Elderfield, said the review would examine the fitness and probity of all executive and non-executive directors at banks which have received Government support.

New data suggests Germany’s tough stance with Ireland may have its drawbacks — for German banks, the Real Time Brussels blog reported. Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny clashed at a Brussels summit on Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel over her demands to raise Ireland’s low 12.5% corporate tax rate. European diplomats say this showdown is unlikely to end with Germany just giving up. However, another battle could be brewing, which could lead to a different result. Ireland was back in Brussels Monday.

The unemployment rate has been revised sharply upwards in figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) yesterday. In the final quarter of 2010, the seasonally adjusted rate of joblessness was 14.7 per cent, the Irish Times reported. This is more than a full percentage point higher than previously estimated. The unemployment rate was up from the 13.7 per cent recorded three months earlier, according to the Quarterly National Household Survey. This was the largest quarter-on-quarter increase in joblessness in 18 months.

The European Commission is "very satisfied" with the progress Ireland has made on restructuring its banks, a spokesman said Monday, Dow Jones reported. The spokesman for European Commissioner Olli Rehn said Irish banks "have already booked very substantial losses." The EU is "very satisfied with the progress being made with this restructuring," he said. The spokesman also said the European Union expects to complete by the end of March an analysis of the Irish banking system's balance sheets and liquidity situations.

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has asked European Central Bank (ECB) chief Jean-Claude Trichet to deepen the bank’s emergency support for Ireland’s financial system, the Irish Times reported. At his first EU meeting yesterday, the Minister said he wanted the Frankfurt-based institution to allow a longer deleveraging process for the Irish banks and to provide medium-term liquidity so they do not have to rely on two-week funding.

A new survey claims that Irish banks are refusing almost half of the credit applications being made by small businesses, RTÉ News reported. The survey by the small business group, ISME, also indicates that 79% of firms found that banks were making it more difficult to get credit. Those that were successful said they were being penalised with higher interest rates and charges. Mark Fielding, the chief executive of ISME, said the bailed-out Irish banks had ignored Government instructions to get credit flowing again.

The Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement has no power to investigate practices at Irish Nationwide as building societies do not fall under its remit, a spokesman for the office said, the Irish Times reported. The spokesman said the office could not comment on reports around corporate governance failures at the building society under former chief executive Michael Fingleton as it did not cover entities such as the building societies.

Some 80 homes are being sold for half their original value in the biggest ever receivership auction, the Herald.ie reported. The list includes a mews apartment in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 for €600,000 -- down from €1.6m -- an apartment in Dublin's city centre Temple Bar for €80,000, and an apartment in Portlaoise for €35,000. Hundreds of thousands of euro have been cut from boom-time prices with some apartments being sold for less than €24,000.

“Group think” and a “herd instinct” which forced the banks to chase profits made by Anglo Irish Bank were among the causes of the banking crisis, according to draft findings of the Nyberg commission of investigation, the Irish Times reported. The commission has, however, concluded it is difficult to assign blame more specifically for the crisis as many parties share some degree of responsibility.

Ireland's new parliament elected soft-spoken Enda Kenny prime minister Wednesday to lead a coalition government that faces immediate pressure to revive the nation's debt-crippled economy, The Huffington Post reported. Kenny, 59, vowed to solve a bank-bailout crisis that has overwhelmed Ireland's finances and required an emergency rescue by the European Union and International Monetary Fund. He said terms of the EU-IMF loans must be renegotiated to make them more affordable for Ireland and enable the country's recovery from record deficits and double-digit unemployment.