News Ireland daily BLOG by Donie

Thursday 30th April 2015

Irish Banks refuse to pass on mortgage rate cut despite pressure

• Ministers seek reduction from banks for people of Ireland who helped to bail them out

    

Enda Kenny and Joan Burton who said it might have ‘slipped’ bankers’ minds that people’s substantial pay cuts funded the banks’ recovery.

More State banks have defended the standard variable rates (SVR) they impose on some mortgage customers. They said that while rates are kept under review there are no imminent plans to lower them.

Permanent TSB claimed that its SVR of 4.5 per cent was “competitive in the current market” adding that it “broadly reflects the various cost inputs including the cost of funds which the bank raises from a variety of sources including the retail deposit market in Ireland and the international money markets”.

When asked if there were any plans to reduce the rates in light of changing market conditions and pressure from Government, a spokesman would say no more than they “always monitor our rates and will continue to do so”.

KBC offers the same SVR as PTSB although mortgage customers can get a 0.2 per cent discount on both new and existing variable and fixed mortgage rates if they hold a KBC current account with the Bank.”

The bank would not be drawn on its plans other than to say its rates were kept on “under review”.

The average on a tracker mortgage is just over 1 per cent. The average variable rate across the euro zone, meanwhile, is 2.47 per cent. This means that someone with a €300,000 mortgage and an SVR mortgage with a leading Irish bank pays around €650 a month more than someone with a tracker.

The banks’ apparent resistance to an immediate rate cut comes just 24 hours after both Ulster Bank and Bank of Irelandruled out rate cuts for customers with SVR mortgages setting themselves on a collision course with the Government.

Earlier this week the Minister for FinanceMichael Noonan said he planned to ask banks to cut the cost of variable mortgages and expects them to follow his recommendation.

This was followed by a call from Taoiseach Enda Kenny to cut their SVRs. “From any moral point of view, from any ethical point of view, when banks are now restructured and on their way to making profit again, it is just not acceptable that when they themselves can borrow at much cheaper rates that they continue to have higher rates applied to mortgage holders,” Mr Kenny said

Tánaiste Joan Burton echoed Mr Kenny’s sentiments and suggested it might have “slipped their minds” that people’s wages cuts funded the recovery of banks.

“Gratitude will only get you so far with the banks. I’ve never known bankers to be a particularly grateful sort of people,” she said.

Former AIB chiefs ‘very sorry’ for role in banking collapse

  

Two former heads of Allied Irish Banks have expressed regret over the impact the catastrophic banking collapse had on Ireland.

Before a parliamentary inquiry into the collapse, retired chief executive Eugene Sheehy said he feels personal disappointment every day for the failures.

“I’m very sorry for what happened and for my role in those events. I know a lot of people feel very let down, and deservedly so,” Mr Sheehy said.

The former chief executive joined the bank in 1971 and worked his way up to be appointed the top banker by 2005.

He retired in 2009 at the height of Ireland’s financial and economic meltdown.

Mr Sheehy said AIB had asked the Government to adopt a four-bank guarantee scheme in September 2008 during all-night negotiations.

He said he did not ask for the blanket €440bn guarantee ultimately brought in by the then coalition.

“When we saw the guarantee document the next morning we could not see why Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide were included,” Mr Sheehy said.

Michael Buckley, who was formally appointed group chief executive in 2001 and retired in 2005, said he had no information that the bank was lending too much when he was in charge.

“I deeply regret what happened and the damage it inflicted on the lives of so many,” he said.

Mr Buckley said he had no premonition when he was retiring 10 years ago of the looming financial crisis which hit world markets and the shattering impact of the crisis on the Irish economy.

Men and women want sex at completely different times of the day

• A study finds

 

• A new survey about bedroom habits reveals that when it comes to sex, men are larks and women are owls

It’s one of mankind’s age-old quandaries – but now a new study has shed light on just why heterosexual couples never seem to feel amorous at the same time of day.

According to a survey of 2,300 adults, the two sexes simply operate in different time zones when it comes to sex.

While men are at their most amorous between the hours of 6am and 9am, women follow suit much later in the day, between 11pm and 2am.

Erotic toy brand Lovehoney analysed the data to determine that the exact time the average man reaches ‘Peak Horniness’ is 7:54am, compared to 11:21pm for his average female partner.

Only 16pc of men said they regularly want sex before falling asleep, while a meagre 11pc of women responded that they felt most passionate early in the morning.

The survey also suggested that people tend to settle down with partners who have similar sex drives.

Over half of all people polled (63pc of women and 54pc of men) said that they desired sex roughly the same amount as their current partner.

However, 44pc of women and 33pc of men reported having experienced issues in previous relationships due to mismatched sex drives.

Lovehoney co-owner Richard Longhurst said: “This shows that there are big differences in Sex O’Clock between the sexes.

“Men are ready for sex just before breakfast whereas women most want passion last thing at night.

“What is encouraging is that most people tend to find sexual happiness in the end with a partner with similar needs.

“But Lovehoney has found that most of us do have a few difficult relationships with lovers whose sex drives are different from our own along the way.”

Oil falls more than 1%, as U.S. crude stockpiles are set for another high

  

Oil fell more than 1 percent on Tuesday ahead of weekly U.S. crude inventory data that is expected to hit another high and as Saudi Arabia pledged to supply more oil to China if needed.

U.S. commercial crude stockpiles were expected to have risen last week for the 16th straight week, up from a record 489 million barrels, even though drilling activity fell, a preliminary survey by Reuters showed on Monday.

Comments from top Saudi oil officials on Monday reiterated the country’s position of keeping production high to meet demand as it maintains its market share.

Brent June crude futures had dropped 84 cents to $63.99 a barrel by 0702 GMT. U.S. June crude fell 84 cents to $56.14 a barrel.

The fall in prices “reflects the major gains that have been made in the last few weeks and a little bit of concern over what the inventory numbers in the U.S. might show”, said Michael McCarthy, chief strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney.

Brent crude hit a 4-1/2 month high last week, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) has risen for six consecutive weeks, underpinned by net long positions on both contracts as speculators bet on a decline in U.S. shale output.

While a roughly 50 percent drop in global oil prices since June last year has helped economies in Asia, it has posed “difficult challenges” for many oil producers, Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said on Tuesday.

“Sudden rises or falls in the cost of oil are not welcome … It’s in all our interests to ensure stable prices,” he said in Beijing.

Geopolitical tension, mainly in Yemen and Syria, and unplanned production outages, including in the North Sea and Brazil, have prompted Barclays to raise its oil price forecast.

The bank raised its Brent forecast by $9 to $60 a barrel for 2015 and by $8 to $68 in 2016. It also raised its WTI price outlook by $8 to $54 a barrel this year and by $7 to $64 for 2016.

Still, it warned in a research note that “the oil market is not out of the woods yet and weak fundamentals will weigh on prevailing bullish market sentiment in the second quarter”.

The two oil benchmarks are sitting just above key technical levels, with Brent above $64-$64.50 and WTI above $56, McCarthy said.

Bets on rising Brent crude prices rose for a fifth straight week to a new record, InterContinental Exchange (ICE) data showed on Monday.

One in six species on earth face extinction from climate change

  

Global temperature rise of four degrees Celsius could spell disaster for a huge number of species around the world

One out of six species faces extinction as a result of climate change and urgent action must be taken to save large numbers of animals from being wiped out, an analysis said Thursday.

The study, published in the US journal Science, found that a global temperature rise of four degrees Celsius could spell disaster for a huge number of species around the world.

“We urgently need to adopt strategies that limit further climate change if we are to avoid an acceleration of global extinction,” said study author Mark Urban, an ecology and evolutionary biology researcher at the University of Connecticut.

The analysis evaluated 131 previous studies about the impact of climate change on flora and fauna around the world.

It concluded that with each rising degree in global temperatures, more species were at risk.

A two degree increase, the study noted, could threaten 5.2 percent of species, while a three degree boost would put 8.5 percent of all species at risk.

“If we follow our current, business-as-usual trajectory (leading to a 4.3 degree Celsius rise)… climate change threatens one in six species (16 percent),” the study said.

Different regions of the world had varied extinction threats.

“Extinction risks were highest in South America, Australia and New Zealand, and risks did not vary by taxonomic group,” Urban said.

In South America, the most vulnerable region, 23 percent of species may face extinction.

Fourteen percent could be threatened in New Zealand and Australia.

Five percent of species in Europe could face extinction, compared to six percent in North America, the study found.

Urban said governments must urgently act to prevent widespread extinction.

“Climate change is poised to accelerate extinctions around the world unless we adopt new strategies to limit it and implement specific conservation strategies to protect the most threatened species,” he said.

Meanwhile, a related study in Science Thursday found that marine fossils can help identify which animals and ocean ecosystems face the greatest risk of extinction.

A team of paleontologists and ecologists looked at marine animals that died out over the past 23 million years.

They found that some groups were more vulnerable than others and the threat varied regionally.

“Whales, dolphins and seals show higher risk of extinction than sharks or invertebrates such as corals. Clams and mussels – so-called bivalves – had about one-tenth the extinction risk of mammals,” the study found.

Regions of the tropics such as the Indo-Pacific and the Caribbean were most at risk. Climate change and other human-related activities such as fishing contributed to that vulnerability.

“Climate change and human activities are impacting groups of animals that have a long history, and studying that history can help us condition our expectations for how they might respond today,” said lead author Seth Finnegan, an assistant professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

But he said more research is needed to protect vulnerable species.

“There is a lot more work that needs to be done to understand the causes underlying these patterns and their policy implications,” he added.

News Ireland daily BLOG by Donie

Wednesday 3rd July 2013

New Aer-Lingus route expansion to create 200 jobs

  

AER Lingus is to expand its transatlantic operations with new year round services to San Francisco and Toronto.

Airline chiefs and Government claimed the investment in the North American market would boost links with Silicon Valley and also bring tourists into Ireland.

Aer Lingus said the expansion would create 200 jobs.

Christoph Mueller, the airline’s chief executive, said the carrier’s transatlantic business is going from strength to strength.

“Our transatlantic capacity will increase by 24% in 2014, following on from the 13% additional capacity in our 2013 transatlantic schedule,” he said.

“Our operation of the San Francisco route will strengthen Ireland’s ties with Silicon Valley and encourage Ireland’s development as a technology hub for Europe.”

Leo Varadkar, Transport Minister, said: “This Government has always sought to improve air access to key tourism and business markets, such as the US and Canada.

“The return of the direct air service to the US west coast is particularly important and I’m very happy to see the route being filled by an Irish airline.”

Aer Lingus will run five services a week from Dublin to San Francisco from April next year. A daily direct service to Toronto will kick in at the same time for the summer season with up to four services a week in the winter.

Aer Lingus said the investment will support jobs in the airline and aircraft leasing company the ASL Aviation Group.

As part of the wider transatlantic operations, new aircraft will be based in Shannon offering increased frequency in and out of New York and Boston.

Emily O’Reilly successfully elected as European Ombudsman

 

Ireland’s Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has been elected as the next European Ombudsman and will take up her new post in October, it was announced today.

Ms O’ Reilly’s victory was welcomed by the outgoing European Ombudsman, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros who  said she would pursue the job with dynamism and vision.

Her departure opens the way for the appointment of a new Ombudsman and Information Commissioner here.,Ms O Reilly has been in the post since 2003 and was re-appointed for a new six year term in 2009.

She was famously described as “Blonde Ambition” by former Fianna Fail  government press secretary PJ Mara who clashed with her during her previous career as a political correspondent.

Mr Diamandouros said “I am convinced that Emily O’Reilly will pursue with dedication, dynamism, and vision the European Ombudsman’s goal of serving as a bridge between European citizens and theEU administration.

“Her experience in impressively restructuring and successfully running an ombudsman institution at the national level will undoubtedly be extremely valuable to her new institution.

“I am also sure that she will give further impetus to the European Ombudsman’s close cooperation with the ombudsman community in Europe, in which she has played a prominent role over the past ten years. I congratulate her warmly and wish her the very best in leading the European Ombudsman institution forward.”

A former journalist Ms O’ Reilly – who is in her mid fifties – is a native of Tullamore, Co Offaly and is married with five children. She is  a graduate ofUniversity College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin.

She was also the recipient of a Niemann Fellowship in Journalism at Harvard University, Cambridge, U.S.A.  In December 2008 Ms O’Reilly was awarded a Doctor of Laws by the National University of Ireland in recognition of her contribution to public service and to human rights.

Irish Government approves the closure of St Patrick’s Institution

 

The Government has approved the closure of the controversial St Patrick’s Institution, which is a detention centre for young offenders.

A proposal to shut it down was brought before the Cabinet last night by Justice Minister Alan Shatter and accepted.

Mr Shatter decided on the immediate closure, which was revealed in the Irish Independent on Monday, after studying the contents of damning reports on St Patrick’s from the inspector of prisons, Judge Michael Reilly.

The judge issued a heavily critical report last autumn and issued a number of recommendations.

It is understood he was not happy with the implementation of the recommendations and as a result the minister opted for closure.

In the meantime, 16 year old offenders have been transferred to Oberstown and Trinity House centres in north county Dublin.

It is expected that the remaining prisoners, aged between 17 and 21 years, will now be moved to another Dublin jail.

The population of St Patrick’s has dropped from 230 two years ago to 120 today because of the changes.

Senior staff at the institution were informed of the shutdown proposal on Sunday.

Lithium Lowers the Risk of Suicide in Those With Mood Disorders

  

A study published in the journal bmj.com reveals that the drug lithium is effective in lowering the risk of suicide and self harm in those with mood disorders.

“The drug seems to reduce the risk of death and suicide by more than 60% compared with placebo. This review reinforces lithium as an effective agent to reduce the risk of suicide in people with mood disorders, ” author’s of the study state.

One of the leading causes of global disability is mood disorders. The two types of mood disorders are – unipolar disorder, a clinical depression, and bipolar depression, which is manic depression.  Both these disorders cause serious long term conditions that involve extreme mood swings. Those with bipolar depression experience mania and hypomania.

People who suffer from mood disorders are at 30 times greater risk of suicide compared to the general public. The only way to keep their moods in normal limits is with the help of stabilising drugs such as lithium, anticonvulsants or antipsychotics. But not much is known about their role in suicide prevention.

In order to check whether lithium has a preventive effect for self harm and suicide in those with unipolar and bipolar mood disorders, a team of researchers from the universities of Oxford, U.K., and Verona in Italy conducted a study.

They examined the results of 48 randomized controlled trials that were done on 6,674 participants. The participants were given lithium with placebo or active drugs in long treatment for mood disorders. They noticed that compared to the placebo, lithium was more effective in lowering the number of suicide and deaths from any cause. But they couldn’t trace any clear benefits for lithium when compared to placebo in preventing self harm.

On comparing lithium with each active drug treatment, a statistically important disparity was noticed only with carbamazepine for intentional self harm.  Overall, compared to other active treatments, lithium was better.

“This updated systematic review reinforces lithium as an effective agent to reduce the risk of suicide in people with mood disorders,” say the authors.

They continue to state that lithium exerts anti suicidal effect by lowering relapses of mood disorders. There is also evidence that states lithium decreases aggression and possibly impulsivity.

They conclude saying, “Clinicians need to take a balanced view of the likely benefits and harm of lithium in the individual patient. Understanding the mechanism by which lithium acts to decrease suicidal behavior could lead to a better understanding of the neurobiology of suicide.”

The top three pension myths

  

After hundreds of consultations over the past 12 months we compiled a list of the three most frequent pension misconceptions.

Guaranteed final salary schemes

The most common myth about UK private pensions is that final salary (defined benefit) schemes are guaranteed.

The second most commonly held incorrect assumption was that final salary schemes always increase in value each year; and the third that final salary schemes automatically provide for spouses and dependants when the member dies.

It has become clear that there is a lot of misinformation and, in some cases, downright lies in the public domain about UK private pensions.

This must be addressed urgently as it could seriously compromise people’s long-term financial planning strategies. The myths need to be busted.

The belief that final salary, or defined benefit, pensions are guaranteed is simply not true in the vast majority of cases.

Find the best annuity rate for your circumstances

Defined benefit (DB) schemes are, by their very nature, reliant on the financial stability of the members’ firm. The question someone, especially a younger worker, should ask themselves is ‘will my company still exist and be financially sound in three or four decades’ time when I come to draw my pension?’

Also, it should be remembered that pension formulas can, and often do, change over time and such modifications can significantly alter how much a member accumulates in their pension fund.

DB pensions

Next there is the idea that DB pensions always annually increase in value. While the value on paper may indeed increase, what members need to bear in mind is the real return that is being achieved after inflation has been taken into account. The majority of pension schemes are now applying increases in line with CPI (consumer prices index) rather than RPI (retail prices index) and the government forecasts that CPI will be 1.2% less per annum than RPI over the long term.

Final salary pension

Finally, we have the belief that spouses and children will receive a member’sfinal salary pension should that member die. In many cases a spouse will receive 50% of the income the pension member was receiving on death – but again, this is not guaranteed. Due to the increasing liabilities that pension schemes are facing, many are now changing the terms in which spousal benefits are paid.

Such changes include amending the amount of annual increases the spouse will receive annually on the pension, pension reductions for considerably younger spouses (more than 10 years), and declining spousal pensions if the spouse is a non-UK domicile and the marriage was not registered in the UK.

The earths climate extremes are ‘unprecedented’

  

More national temperature records were broken in the last decade than in previous ones

The Earth experienced unprecedented recorded climate extremes during the decade 2001-2010, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.

Its new report says more national temperature records were reported broken than in previous decades.

There was an increase in deaths from heatwaves over that decade.

This was particularly pronounced during the extreme summers in Europe in 2003 and in the Russian Federation during 2010.

But despite the decade being the second wettest since 1901 (with 2010 the wettest year recorded) fewer people died from floods than in the previous decade.

Better warning systems and increased preparedness take much of the credit for the reduced deaths. The WMO says smarter climate information will be needed as the climate continues to change.

Its report, The Global Climate 2001-2010, A Decade of Climate Extremes, analysed global and regional trends, as well as extreme events such as Hurricane Katrina, floods in Pakistan and droughts in the Amazon, Australia and East Africa.

The decade was the warmest for both hemispheres and for both land and ocean surface temperatures. The record warmth was accompanied by a rapid decline in Arctic sea ice, and accelerating loss of mass from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and from glaciers.

Global mean sea levels rose about 3mm per year – about double the observed 20th century trend of 1.6mm per year. Global sea level averaged over the decade was about 20cm higher than in 1880.

The report notes that the high temperatures in the decade were achieved without a strong episode of the El Nino current which typically warms the world. It says that a strong El Nino episode would probably have driven temperatures even higher.

Although overall temperature rise has slowed down since the 1990s, the WMO says temperatures are still rising because of greenhouse gases from human society.

The WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said: “Natural climate variability, caused in part by interactions between our atmosphere and oceans means that some years are cooler than others. On an annual basis, the global temperature curve is not a smooth one. On a long-term basis the underlying trend is clearly in an upward direction, more so in recent times.”

But climate change doubters emphasise the lack of movement in temperatures throughout the decade.

Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), told BBC News that the issue hinged on the time frame.

“For longer periods (two decades or longer) we found a robust and a statistically significant warming trend,” he said. For shorter periods – a decade or less – there is no longer a significant temperature trend of either sign, consistent with the reports of a recent ‘plateauing’ of global temperatures.”

Even so, many climate scientists are alarmed by the consistently high temperatures during the decade. Every year of the decade except 2008 was among the 10 warmest on record.

The warmest year ever recorded was 2010, with a temperature estimated at 0.54C above the 14.0C long-term average of 1961-1990 base period, followed closely by 2005.

Greenland recorded the largest decadal temperature anomaly, +1.71C above the long-term average and with a temperature in 2010 of +3.2C above average. Africa experienced warmer than normal conditions in every year of the decade.

Results from WMO’s survey showed that nearly 94% of reporting countries had their warmest decade in 2001-2010. No country reported a nationwide average decadal temperature cooler than the long term average.