Ireland

IDA Ireland has clawed back almost € 55 million in grants from multinational companies over a 10 year period,figures provided by Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise Leo Varadkar show, the Irish Times reported. In a written Dáil reply to co-leader of the Social Democrats Catherine Murphy, Mr. Varadkar confirmed that the largest annual clawback of the grants took place in 2011 when the IDA clawed back €18.7million from 11 companies. This followed the IDA revoking €12.88 million in grants in 2010 from 16 companies as unemployment rates soared.

Ulster Bank has been fined a record €37.8 million by the Central Bank for its role in the State’s tracker mortgage scandal, which saw the lender devise “deliberate” strategies to shift borrowers off cheap mortgages during the financial crisis and only rectify matters for those that complained, the Irish Times reported. Borrowers lost 43 properties as a result of overcharging as they were denied their entitlement to a low-cost mortgage linked to the European Central Bank’s main rate, the Central Bank said in a statement on Thursday. Family homes accounted for 29 of these cases.

British tourists should go ahead and book foreign holidays despite government warnings not to, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary said on Wednesday, as the low-cost carrier announced plans to run 80% of its peak summer capacity, Reuters reported. Vaccine rollouts will tame COVID-19 and reopen travel in time for beach holidays, O’Leary predicted during a news conference in which he also dismissed recent advice from UK ministers that foreign travel is likely to remain off-limits.

The Central Bank has raised further concerns about the Government’s new shared equity loan scheme for struggling home-buyers, suggesting it is unlikely to elicit more supply, the Irish Times reported. The regulator’s director of economics and statistics, Mark Cassidy, said “the main effect” of the proposed scheme was likely to be on demand as there seems to be “some sluggishness” around how supply reacts to changes in the market. The implication being that the initiative could trigger further price inflation.

Securities settlement for Irish assets worth more than 100 billion euros ($119 billion) has left London for the European Union in the latest adjustment in markets to Brexit, Reuters reported. Pan-European exchange Euronext, which runs the Irish stock exchange, said on Thursday it had completed the migration of securities settlement for 50 Irish companies from Crest in London to Euroclear Bank in Brussels from March 15. Settlement of EU securities must take place in a central securities depository (CSD) inside the bloc.

Former executives at Davy who were at the heart of a bond-trading scandal that has rattled the stockbroking firm – and are still shareholders in it – are close to agreeing to allowing the remaining board members to put it up for sale, the Irish Times reported. It is expected that Davy, where former National Treasury Management Agency chief executive John Corrigan is chairman and former AIB chief executive Bernard Byrne stepped in as interim chief executive last weekend, will confirm before the weekend that the business is being put on the market.

Ireland’s top securities firm closed its bond desk and said all those involved in a deal which has plunged the company into controversy have now exited, as it sought to draw a line under the worst scandal to hit Dublin’s stockbroking community in decades, Bloomberg News reported. Four staff were made redundant by the closure, Davy said. The move comes after a central bank investigation prompted the nation’s debt office to strip the firm its role as a primary dealer in government bonds on Monday.

Brian McKiernan, chief executive of Ireland’s biggest securities firm Davy, resigned after regulators accused the company of a “lack of candor” in dealing with one of the worst scandals to hit Dublin’s stockbroking community in years, Bloomberg News reported. The board has also accepted the resignations of Kyran McLaughlin as a non-executive deputy chairman and Barry Nangle as head of bonds, the Dublin-based firm said in a statement Saturday. Bernard Byrne, deputy CEO, has been appointed interim chief executive.

Norwegian Air expects its dispute with Boeing over the cancellation of orders for 97 aircraft to be decided in U.S. legal proceedings and not as part of an Irish restructuring process, a lawyer for the airline said on Friday, Reuters reported. Norwegian was given protection from bankruptcy in both Norway and Ireland, where most of its assets are registered, late last year and is aiming to emerge from the process in April with fewer aircraft and less debt. On Friday, the airline indicated to the Irish court that it was seeking to repudiate three aircraft sales contracts with Boeing.

Irish public finances fell deeper into the red last month as spending on various pandemic-related supports rose and tax receipts fell, the Irish Times reported. The latest exchequer returns, published by the Department of Finance, show the Government’s budget deficit - on a rolling 12-month basis – swelled to just over €14 billion in February. This was fuelled by a combination of falling tax revenues and increased spending on financial supports for impacted workers and businesses.