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Saturday, December 31, 2011

Donie's Saturday News Blog update

Good News: Deaths on Irish roads for 2011 sets a new record of fewest deaths

  
2011 has been a record year for Ireland in terms of road safety. A total of 185 people were killed in traffic collisions, the lowest number people since records began. 

The Government has promised to continue to pursue road safety as a priority for 2012, with Transport Minister Leo Varadkar announcing 16 new penalty point offences next year. 

Among those being considered are penalty points for drivers who put their babies in rear-facing car seats next to airbags, and for motorcyclists who do not wear a crash helmet. 

Minister Varadkar says he hopes these measures will make our roads even safer.

"2011 has been the safest year on our roads since records begin. We want 2012 to be safer still," he said.

50 years of Television in Ireland as seen by RTE: 

Over a million people watched firework display at Sydney Harbour    Auckland welcomes 2012
Even if you don’t own a television, you’ll be seeing and hearing a lot about the 50th anniversary of television in Ireland over the next few days. It will go something like this: Seán Lemass… well Holy God… one for everyone in the audience… okey-doke… #JeanByrne. But enough of all this rampant nostalgia: what about the next 50 years? Here’s a run-down of events as they are likely to happen.
2012: Analogue television is switched off, leaving snowy screens in households where the grand-kids forgot to bring round a Saorview set-top box. Audience ratings for Nationwide plummet.
2013: Eamon Ryan wins the first ever series of Celebrity Mastermind and uses the glory of victory to relaunch the Green Party. The format is not renewed.
2014: The Late Late Show viewer ratings are decimated as TV3 schedule a Friday night Irish version of Total Wipeout, hosted by Georgia Salpa.
2016: RTÉ drops the Angelus and attempts to placate furious fans of middle-distance stares by making it available as an app for owners of Smart TVs.
2017: There’s relief for Dave Fanning as he finally gets to the end of a question he started asking Michael Stipe on2TV in 1995.
2020: A TV3 documentary on breastfeeding falls foul of Apple TV’s terms and conditions on pornography and is removed from the TV3 channel app, sparking a public outcry. TV3 successfully appeals the decision. A publicity stunt is suspected.
2021: After a landslide “yes” vote in that year’s referendum, it becomes a criminal offence to quote from a Financial Regulator TV ad that ran during the Noughties.
2023: The labour market is inundated with unfeasibly chirpy continuity announcers who are laid off en masse after Irish media companies declare that no one watches “linear” television anymore.
2027: Rigorous consumer research reveals that the phrase “roll it there, Róisín” has faded from the collective folk memory, although nursing homes are full of people still banging on about someone called Sally O’Brien.
2029: As property prices make a return to “2007 levels”, RTÉ sells Montrose. The demolition goes smoothly, aside from a last minute protest by Charlie Bird. Within months, there is no evidence that RTÉ was ever located there, although the new owners confess to being spooked by the occasional sight of a flying vehicle later identified as the Wanderly Wagon.
2032: After one cutback in the newsroom budget too many, Bryan Dobson has a “Network” moment. He is replaced by Craig Doyle.
2036: TV3 admits it’s not the “real” Vincent Browne who hosts its late-night current affairs show, but a digitally generated avatar programmed to raise its voice in response to a fixed list of trigger words. The channel’s press office declines to specify when exactly the switch was made.
2043: The analogue-era game-show Where in the World is relaunched as Where in the Solar System as the format is updated for the age of cheap commercial space travel. The losers are sent on a one-way trip to ex-planet Pluto.
2045: Shortly after Christmas, RTÉ shows the vintage film 2046 as its Midweek Movie, even though the title refers to a hotel room number and not a calendar year.
2061: As a series of virtual-reality riots tear a rip in the space-time continuum on the eve of Irish television’s centenary, the RTÉ News Channel is criticised for failing to provide live coverage of Ireland’s descent into a black hole. It opts instead to stick with a repeat of Reeling in the Years.

James Reilly (Health Minister) and Roisin Shortall are ‘barely talking’

     
Health Minister James Reilly and Labour’s Roisin Shortall. 

TWO Government ministers are barely on talking terms, it has emerged. A “significant rift” has developed in the Department of Health between Fine Gael’s James Reilly and Labour’s Roisin Shortall.

The Herald previously revealed how Ms Shortall was deeply unhappy with her counterpart’s handling of the Budget cuts.
And now it has emerged that Dr Reilly has on occasion ignored phone calls from his junior minister.
The pair have been reduced to communicating via email in recent weeks, according to sources.
Ms Shortall has written to Dr Reilly complaining about his failure to return her calls several times on an issue that related to her area of responsibility for primary care.
The spat first emerged last month when Ms Shortall broke ranks to publicly criticise Dr Reilly for “kite-flying” ahead of the Budget.
Dr Reilly had warned that a €50 medical card tax, a hike in prescription charges and the widespread closure of hospitals could be part of the Budget.
Ms Shortall responded by saying:”I think it has caused a lot of alarm and concern among older people in particular, people who very much depend on medical cards and I think it is unfortunate that has happened.”
The Department of Health did face the biggest raft of cutbacks in the Budget — but none of the above measures were included.
Prior to the Budget controversy, the pair also clashed over fees for GPs administering the winter flu vaccine.
Dr Reilly slashed the fee for family doctors involved in the vaccination campaign by a third from €42 to €28.
But Ms Shortall was left out of the loop, even though GP care is part of her job.
She went as far as writing to Dr Reilly to “express my entire dissatisfaction” with the way the issue was handled and how it was “completely unacceptable” for her to be excluded.

Ten of Ireland’s farmers forced to cull thousands of battery hens to comply with EU law

           

TEN farmers across the country will be forced to cull hundreds of thousands of hens next week to comply with an EU directive which the IFA claims could cost them their livelihoods.

Ireland is among 14 EU member states which have not fully complied with a directive issued back in 1999 to phase out so-called battery cages to house hens and replace them with a more humane version known as “enriched” cages.
As of January 1, the use of the small-wire battery cages will be illegal.
Instead, egg producers must use the larger, modified cages equipped with perches and litter that allows hens enough room to roost, nest and scratch.
But 10 hold-out farmers here, who did not switch over to the new cages by the January 1 deadline, will now have no choice but to cull their flocks next week or risk prosecution by the European Court.
However, the directive — aimed at providing laying hens with a more natural and humane environment — could well cost them their farms and their livelihoods, said Alo Mohan, chairman of the IFA poultry committee.
While all farmers welcomed higher welfare standards for their animals, he said, the farmers that had not switched over to the new cages tended to be small independent farmers who simply couldn’t afford the switch.
It will cost some farmers more than €1m to buy and install the new larger cages.
The cages are required to be at least 750 sq cm per hen compared with the banned cages that had to be no less than 550 sq cm per hen.
The Department of Agriculture did provide grant aid of about €30 per bird — but Mr Mohan said that for some farmers it still wasn’t enough.
“Farmers have borrowed to the shirt of their back and taken out mortgages on their farms to get these new cages,” he said.
But an EU spokeswoman said the farmers had no choice but to comply because Ireland had agreed to the directive.

Irish Property prices fall for the first time in four months

   
With the dismal growth outlook making would-be buyers hesitant, 2012 looks set to be another poor year for the housing market after property prices fell in December.
Nationwide on Friday reported a fall in house prices for the first time in four months. The building society’s figures, based its on lending data, show that house prices have risen nominally over the past year, but at 1 per cent this rise has been eclipsed in real terms by annual inflation, which stood at 4.8 per cent for November.
Land Registry data, which cover only England and Wales, paint an even bleaker picture. For the year to November, prices are down by almost 2 per cent.
The Nationwide figures show London and its environs have performed better than the rest of the country.
Falls have been sharpest in Northern Ireland, where prices have slumped by more than 8 per cent year-on-year. Prices have also fallen, though by far smaller margins in the North West, the North and Scotland.
As in 2011, price movements in the coming year are expected to vary significantly between regions. But, overall, the outlook remains bleak.
Next year “isn’t shaping up to be much better than 2011, for the UK economy or the housing market,” Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist, said, adding that prices would move sideways or modestly lower as a result of the UK economy struggling to gain momentum.
Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight expected prices to drop by about 5 per cent, with a significant chance of even sharper falls.
Though ultra-low rates interest rates would continue to limit the number of homes up for sale by providing little imperative for owners to sell, weak demand was likely to offset the benefit provided by this.
“Low wage growth, a markedly weakening labour market and major concerns over the outlook will limit potential buyers and weigh down on house prices,” Mr Archer said. “A significant number of people are still finding it hard to get a mortgage, and there is a real danger that banks’ ability to lend could be hit by difficult wholesale funding conditions.”
Estate agency groups have also forecast declines across the mainstream property market next year. Knight Frank predicts a 5 per cent fall, while Savills and Hamptons International both expect a 2 per cent decline.
Separately, Bank of England data on housing equity withdrawal, out Friday, indicated that the level of housing activity remained weak in the third quarter. The amount of equity withdrawn by homeowners has been negative since 2008, signalling a fall in the number of house purchases and a reduction in remortgaging.

The curious case of Dick Roche former Minister and the flaming Mercedes

(A la Dana)

   
The Dana thing was weird but now former Minister Dick Roche is the latest public figure to have their car nearly kill them.
During the presidential campaign an exploding tyre almost derailed Dana,even though she suspected some foul play had been involved.
Now, former Minster for the Environment Dick Roche had to run for his life after his Mercedes burst into flames on St Stephen’s Day.
The former politician was driving his one-year-old Merc in Wexford when he and his wife had to evacuate the car before it blew up.
“A couple of motorists were vigorously flashing their lights at us but I just thought they were being impatient because I was driving very slowly at the time,” said Roche.
“They had noticed something red and glowing underneath the car but of course I couldn’t see the flames.
“When I pulled over into the car park of the Ferrycarrig Hotel we spotted the fire coming from underneath the car.
“Luckily the tank in the car didn’t blow up and it was the only part of the car that wasn’t completely destroyed. The diesel cap had bubbled but the tank didn’t explode and the two front wheels just melted.”
The Wicklow man was very lucky and the former Fianna Fail TD is now handing over the matter to the insurance company and the manufacturer.
“It was a serious fire and very shocking at the time but thankfully nobody was killed. The car is a complete write-off. The insurance company have sent an assessor to have a look at it and Mercedes are investigating what happened.”
So what is going on? Are our automobiles turning on would-be and former politicians? Why are they not going for the ones who are in power? Is Angela Merkel somehow triggering this from Berlin? We must be told?

Three more whales and a Dolphin have been found beached in recent days off the west coast of Ireland

   

In the latest discovery, a male sperm whale, pictured, was found stranded on Omey Island near Cleggan, Co Galway.

The deep-water adult mammal was already dead when it was washed up, with the skin shed and its lower jaw broken.
The Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG) last night said it was relatively common to have strandings, with between 140 and 150 reports each year.
IWDG co-ordinator Simon Berrow said: “Chances are it died offshore and got washed in with the wind.”
Mr Berrow said the IWDG had also recently received reports of a bottlenose whale found on White Strand in north Clare, a pilot whale on Fintra Beach in Donegal, and a dolphin in Silverstrand, Galway. All were dead when discovered.

Friday, December 30, 2011

Donie's Friday News Blog

Overweight & Obese Elderly people are more likely to suffer a severe fall   (A study tells us)                                        OBESE elderly people may be more likely than their thinner peers to suffer a potentially disabling fall — though the most severely overweight may be somewhat protected from injury,   From an American journal

Falls are often seen as a problem for thin, frail older people, since their bones are especially prone to fractures, but obesity carries its own risks, said researchers in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
“People who are obese may have a harder time with balance,” said researcher Christine Himes, of Syracuse University in New York.
And when obese people lose their footing, they may be less able to react and stop a fall, she added. Looking at 10,755 people aged 65 and over, Himes found that obese people were 12pc to 50pc more likely to suffer a fall.
injuries: Those odds rose with the level of obesity. The 50pc higher risk was seen among people with a body mass index of 40 or higher. Between 1998 and 2006, the group reported 9,621 falls, resulting in more than 3,100 injuries serious enough to need medical attention.
Of people who suffered a fall, 23pc were obese, compared with 20pc among the elderly who did not fall. But when it came to the risk of being injured by a fall, the most severely obese were one-third less likely to be injured than normal-weight elders.          

  
Irish Motorists will face a lot of new points offences in 2012
  
Irish motorists face 16 new penalty-point offences and fines next year,

It is aimed at issues such as seatbelts, vehicle lighting and crash helmets on motorcyclists They will bring to 63 the number of road offences that attract penalty points.                       Drivers who put their babies beside them in rear-facing car seats next to airbags will face points under the raft of new offences being rolled out.
Transport Minister Leo Varadkar has said he is committed to bringing in the new penalty points by the end of 2012.
He also revealed that he is considering raising the penalty points that motorists get for common offences, such as speeding or driving while using a mobile phone.
The new points offences planned for 2012 include:
- A tightening up on seatbelt laws to cover children travelling in goods vehicles, not just in cars.
- Penalty points for drivers who do not have a good view through their windscreen, which could affect those who have very dark tinted windows.
- Driving a car with a faulty light will become a stand-alone offence, attracting one point or three upon conviction in court.
- Bus and truck drivers caught not wearing a seat belt will receive two penalty points and a €60 fine or four points upon conviction in court.
- And for the first time, driving a motorcycle without a crash helmet will become a points offence.
One of the new offences will act as a major deterrent for drivers who put their infants in rear-facing baby seats in the front seat of the car.
Many of these seats can block airbags located at the front of the vehicle, meaning that drivers are liable for two penalty points on payment of a fixed charge — rising to four if the driver is convicted in court.
The Road Safety Authority (RSA) has warned that rear-facing baby seats are best placed in the back seat and “should never be used in a front passenger seat that has an active airbag”.
This is because of the risk of the baby’s neck being broken if the airbag is deployed in a crash.
Many of the other new offences relate to trucks, trailers, taxis and buses and tighten up laws on seatbelts, maximum weights and lighting.
The new fines have not been finalised but will all be in the €60 to €80 range.
Mr Varadkar justified the clampdown, saying: “Each measure we take to advance road safety increases the likelihood that lives will be saved.
“This Government has made road safety a priority and we will continue to focus efforts on saving lives in 2012.”
The minister also confirmed that he is considering an increase in penalty points for speeding and mobile-phone use.
The RSA has recommended that the points for speeding should be increased from two to three. And driving while using a mobile phone has now overtaken not wearing seatbelts as the second biggest offence after speeding.
The penalty-points system, which enters its 10th year in 2012, was last night branded a major success in changing driver behaviour.
New figures show that most drivers who get penalty points turn over a new leaf to avoid more points, hefty fines and higher insurance premiums.
More than one in three motorists have received penalty points. But only 138 of the 758,665 motorists with points have notched up the maximum 12, which is enough to put them off the road for six months.
More than half-a-million drivers are sticking on just two points, according to figures to the end of November.
RSA spokesman Brian Farrell said: “It is a case of once bitter, twice shy. People who get points are not prepared to get many more and risk losing their licence or paying higher insurance premiums.”
 Licence:  Mr Farrell said the fact that there were now almost 100,000 drivers with points for mobile phone use showed that gardai were determined to clamp down on this.
He added: “It’s simply crazy to use your mobile phone while driving as you are four times more likely to be involved in a crash. And texting while driving is just incredibly dangerous.”
Automobile Association spokesman Conor Faughnan said the penalty-points system had actually succeeded in changing driver behaviour.
He added: “I predicted that it would be a success when it was first introduced, and it is clear from the figures that this is the case.” 

‘The best & Bravest girl in the world’ 
Father says about Meadhbh after her LIFE-SAVING LIVER OPERATION

     

Meadhbh Mcgivern who underwent a successful liver transplant in London pictured at home in Ballinamore, Co Leitrim with her parents Joe and Assumpta.

“THE bravest girl in the world,” … that’s how Sligo man Joe Mcgivern describes his 14-year-old daughter Maedhbh as celebrations continue on her happy return home from a successful liver transplant at King’s College Hospital, London.
Maedhbh too is delighted to be home and says: “It’s a dream come true, to be in my own bed and to abe able to enjoy my mum’s cooking.”
The little things that most teenagers take for granted become milestones in Maedhbh’s recovery after she had to endure the heartbreak of an aborted transfer to London from Sligo in July.
On that occasion, a helicopter flight to London from Strandhill is cancelled at the last minute and the Health Minister James Reilly apologises to the Mcgivern family of Ballinamore.
However, that heartbreak is replaced with joy following a 14 hours of surgery in September. Brave Maedhbh had been on a transplant waiting list for two years. She is initially airlifted from King’s Hospital to Crumlin Hospital, Dublin, and her parents Joe and Assumpta put on a huge welcome home party as their daughter finally arrives back in her County Leitrim home.
“It’s just so great to be back home after all that has happened. I was so disappointed when I had to come home from Sligo airport in July when the opportunity was missed to go to London for a transplant. But, I kept believing that it would happen and I was determined that I would get a transplant and get my life back to normal,” Maedhbh says.
She receives an additional boost when she wins the Leitrim Young Person of the Year accolade and messages of goodwill pour in to her from all over Ireland.
Maedhbh thanks all those who have prayed for her and send her good wishes. She reveals that she has decorated her room with all the cards and this reminds her of how good people are.
She also thanks the nurses and doctors in London and Dublin and in particular the donor for giving her a new life. “Some family had to endure the awful trauma of losing a loved one in order to give Maedhbh this chance of a new life, but that is what organ donation is all about. It is the ultimate generosity,” said Joe Mcgivern.

‘I was handed a load of crack andBarry was very frightened’: Sinead O’Connor says on her wedding night after her wild drug hunt

         

Stressed: Sinead O’Connor, pictured outside her home this week, has spoken about her post-wedding search for drugs

Sinead O’Connor has spoken about being handed Class A drugs after taking her new drug-counsellor husband on a marijuana hunt on their wedding night.
The Irish singer says her fourth marriage was in trouble from the start and the wild search on the mean streets of Las Vegas led to their eventual split 16 days later.
The 45-year-old insists she still loves Barry Herridge, 38, but says she ended their relationship on Christmas Eve because of the pain he was in
The couple met online four months ago after Barry responded to a plea by unlucky-in-love Sinead asking for potential suitors to come forward.
They married on December 8 in a quickie wedding at the famous Little White Chapel in the Nevada state.
‘We ended up in a cab in some place that was quite dangerous.
‘I wasn’t scared — but he’s a drugs counsellor. What was I thinking?
‘Then I was handed a load of crack. Barry was very frightened — that kind of messed everything up a bit really.’
The purchase or possession of cannabis is an offence in Nevada, subject to a fine of up to $600 for a first offence.
But far more serious might be the repercussions for the Glenageary-born singer’s music career.
For the U.S. authorities routinely refuse travel and work visas to those who have committed ‘crimes of moral turpitude’.
These crimes include ‘a violation (or conspiracy or attempt to violate) any law or regulations of a State, the United States or a foreign country relating to a controlled substance’.
In 1992, Miss O’Connor appeared to advocate marijuana smoking and in a 1999 Irish Times interview, she admitted to smoking ‘weed’, saying: ‘I do not take drugs – I smoke a little weed now and again, which I told the social workers and they laughed.
‘I do not take drink or any other drugs. Everybody knows that.’
The mother-of-four said the marriage was also sabotaged early on by the ‘interference of certain people’.
‘It felt like I was living in a coffin. It was going to be a coffin for both of us and I saw him crushed.
‘The whole reason I ended it was out of respect and love for the man.’
The Nothing Compares 2 U singer says she will never marry again and may not even date anyone.
Sinead this week emerged from her home looking tired, stressed and grey-haired.
Gone was the pretty pink frock from her wedding – and instead she came to the door in nothing but a towel before hurriedly changing into a T-shirt and jeans.
The singer announced on Boxing Day that her ‘dream’ fourth marriage had ended after just 16 days.
She said on her website that the marriage was in trouble just three hours after the Las Vegas ceremony, when people close to her husband tried to ‘kybosh’ it.
 Sinéad posted a statement on her website stating that she had decided to end the marriage after just seven days of domesticity.

Her statement:
'I love him very much': The singer made the announcement on her website, revealing the couple only lived together for 7 days

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Marriage for Irish Actor Chris O’Dowd

 Actor Chris O’Dowd has announced his engagement to TV presenter Dawn Porter below

Chris O' Dowd is off the market      

The Bridesmaids star, raised in Boyle, Co Roscommon, broke the news via his Twitter account today.

He wrote: “I’m so bored of all this happiness and sex. I’m getting married. #engaged.”

Porter who revealed that O’Dowd proposed on St Stephen’s Day at Havelet Bay, Guernsey took to her twitter account to say: “I guess he liked it, coz he put a ring on it #engaged.”

O’Dowd is currently producing a comedy series for Sky 1 about growing up in Ireland in the 80, entitled Moone Boy.

What a year it was? most of it spent losing banks and billions in Bale-outs

Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan with the Financial Regulator, Matthew Elderfield.   

BANKING : THE YEAR STARTED WITH SIX IRISH BANKS, ALL STRUGGLING, AND ENDED WITH FOUR BANKS, STILL STRUGGLING. TWO HAVE BEEN DEEMED “PILLAR” BANKS BY THE GOVERNMENT – BANK OF IRELAND AND ALLIED IRISH BANKS.                                                         

THIRD WILL BE WOUND DOWN – IRISH BANK RESOLUTION CORPORATION, THE MERGED BANK MADE UP OF WHAT REMAINS OF THE TWO MOST TOXIC BANKS, ANGLO IRISH BANK AND IRISH NATIONWIDE BUILDING SOCIETY.

THE FOURTH BANK, IRISH LIFE AND PERMANENT, FACES AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE AS THE GOVERNMENT HAS ABANDONED PLANS TO SELL IRISH LIFE DUE TO MARKET TURMOIL OVER THE EURO CRISIS AND THERE IS UNCERTAINTY OVER THE FUTURE OF THE COMPANY’S BANKING DIVISION, PERMANENT TSB.                 

As 2011 draws to a close, Anglo Irish Bank, Irish Nationwide and EBS building society have been fully nationalised, while Allied Irish Banks and Irish Life and Permanent had been effectively nationalised with the State owning more than 99 per cent of each.

Bank of Ireland will end the year as the only Irish bank among the six lenders in existence at the outset of the crisis that has avoided Government control.
This is a result of the Government’s decision last July to sell a 35 per cent shareholding in the bank to a group of private investors, led by Canadian company Fairfax Financial, for €1.1 billion.
This reduced the State’s shareholding to 15 per cent, despite an injection of €4.2 billion in public funds into the bank since 2009.
The year began with the last government waiting to find out how much would need to be pumped into the banks to over-capitalise them under the November 2010 bailout agreement reached with the EU Commission and the International Monetary Fund.
By the time these emergency lenders to the State had arrived in Dublin, the cost of the banking bailouts had reached €46 billion.
This was the estimate set by the Central Bank in September 2010 after it became clear that the National Asset Management Agency was applying an average haircut of 58 per cent to €74 billion worth of property loans it acquired from five banks, inflicting massive losses on them.
Despite opposition from the Central Bank on the scale of the further recapitalisation required, the European Central Bank dictated what action was needed under the terms of the bailout – Frankfurt ordered that banks had to be stuffed with capital to reassure the financial markets that they had enough in reserve to cover any potential losses.
For the second annual round of stress tests in March 2011, the Central Bank hired outside consultants – Blackrock, the world’s biggest asset manager; Barclays Capital and Boston Consulting – at a cost of €30 million to put the banks through the ringer and to reassure the disbelieving markets.
Unlike the previous year, the banks were not just tested for capital requirements to cover potential losses, including possible deficits materialising from rising losses on residential mortgages. The Central Bank also assessed how much by way of loans and other assets they would need to shed in a so-called “deleveraging” of their balance sheets. This was to wean them off funding from both the European and Irish Central Bank – the reason why the ECB pressurised the then minister for finance Brian Lenihan to accept a bailout.
As the two-year run of corporate deposits on the Irish banks slowed in the final months of 2010, the central banks in Frankfurt and Dublin had covered the shortfall.
By the end of 2010 the six guaranteed banks had drawn €91 billion from the ECB and a further €51 billion from the Irish Central Bank through emergency loans or “exceptional liquidity assistance”, to give the credit line its technical name. Most of the €51 billion had been loaned to Anglo Irish Bank.
Patrick Honohan, the governor of the Central Bank, and Matthew Elderfield, the deputy governor in charge of financial regulation at the Central Bank, announced how much more the Irish banks would require at the end of March 2011.
The Prudential Capital Assessment Review – or PCar stress test – put the figure at €24 billion. This took account of expected losses over the three years to the end of 2013 and included €5.3 billion of possible but unlikely losses in the years after 2013.
The Prudential Liquidity Assessment Review, or PLar test, estimated the cost of selling €73 billion in excess loans and other assets to “right-size” the banks.
This was on top of the €74 billion of loans which Nama was taking out of the banks at a heavy cost.
The combined sum put a figure on just how broken the funding models of the banks were.
The Central Bank said the four Irish banks left after Anglo and Irish Nationwide had loans of €255.6 billion and €142.1 billion in deposits at the end of 2010. This represented a loans-to-deposits ratio of 180 per cent. A new target of 122.5 per cent was set to be achieved by the end of 2013.
The additional €24 billion capital bill required at the four banks included a further €13 billion for AIB, €5.2 billion for Bank of Ireland, €1.5 billion for EBS and €4 billion for Irish Life and Permanent, for which it meant the effective nationalisation of that bank.
This was the main story of the 2011 stress tests: a fifth Irish institution falling into State control.
Given that Bank of Ireland had already tapped shareholders for €3.5 billion in a rights issue in June 2010, everyone (except the bank and some within Government circles) expected that institution to fall into State hands too.
But the bank’s chief executive Richie Boucher, an executive director since before the crisis, came out fighting, arguing that State control was “not inevitable”.
Coinciding with the stress test results, the new Minister for Finance Michael Noonan and the Fine Gael-Labour Government voted into power that month announced a wide-ranging restructuring of the banking sector.
Plans to sell State-owned EBS (building society) to a consortium of investors led by Dublin-based Cardinal Capital Group were abandoned and Noonan said that EBS would instead be merged into AIB to form one of two “pillar” banks; the other was Bank of Ireland.
Irish Life and Permanent would be broken up and Irish Life sold to raise some of the €4 billion cost of recapitalising Permanent TSB.
Bank of Ireland moved quickly to raise capital by tapping shareholders again, this time for almost €2 billion, and inflicting losses on subordinated bondholders, generating a further €2 billion.
The Minister used the emergency legislative banking powers introduced in December 2010 by his predecessor, to force heavy losses on AIB subordinated bondholders. Despite legal challenges from two of the bondholders, €2 billion was raised by forcing losses on this class of lenders to the bank.
All told, the Government reduced the €70 billion bill for bailing out the banks by about €6 billion by forcing losses on the bank subordinated bondholders.
The ECB overruled any “burden-sharing” with any senior bondholders at Anglo Irish Bank or Irish Nationwide, fearing the effect it may have on the funding of the Irish banking system and indeed the wider European banks.
As a result there was much controversy in November when IBRC paid $1 billion (€720 million) to senior bondholders, repaying in full mostly distressed debt investors who took a punt by buying the bonds when they traded at deep discounts over concerns about the Government’s plans for them.
Instead the Government abandoned efforts to burn senior bondholders in the face of heavy opposition from the ECB in favour of lobbying the EU authorities for permission to park the €31 billion of promissory notes or IOUs being used to bail out Anglo in either one of the European bailout funds.
The aim of the plan is to reduce the €17 billion long-term interest costs of paying for the promissory notes.
The investment of €1.1 billion by Fairfax and fellow North American investors, New York billionaire Wilbur Ross, LA-based Capital Research, Kennedy Wilson, and Fidelity Investments had put the cost of the banking bailouts at €63 billion by the end of the year.
While it appeared that the long-awaited line had finally been drawn under the cost of the banking crisis, the source of new deposits to improve their funding remains a long way off.
By the end of the year, the Irish banks were still reliant on funding from the European and Irish Central Banks to the tune of more than €100 billion. This was despite the banks enjoying some progress on the deleveraging of assets, notably commercial property loans in the UK and the US.
However, as European banks rush to recapitalise, this will increase the amount of assets being dumped on the markets, which could reduce the price of unwanted Irish bank assets.
Another area where there is still no final closure is the suitability of the surviving pre-crisis bankers and whether they should be allowed to hold on to their jobs.
Richie Boucher, the chief executive of Bank of Ireland, is the most prominent of the long-serving bank directors to face the Central Bank’s new fitness and probity tests next year. The regulator has told the banks that any director who intends to remain on after the start of 2012 must pass these tests.
Boucher received very public support from the new investors in Bank of Ireland which complicates matters for the Government, who sold the investors their stake in the bank, and the Central Bank.
Bank of Ireland directors Des Crowley and Denis Donovan stood down from the court or board of the bank during the year but hold on to their executive roles.
Over at AIB, the long-awaited appointment of a chief executive – a post that had been vacant since the departure of Colm Doherty in November 2010 – was made.
Dubliner David Duffy, who had spent most of his career working overseas, was appointed and agreed, after much to-ing and fro-ing by the bank, to the Government’s €500,000 bankers’ pay cap.
Like his counterpart at Bank of Ireland, he faces tough challenges in 2012 at AIB as it identifies the 2,000 staff to be made redundant and aims to attract investors to reduce the State’s shareholding.
The objective for 2012 will be to try to reduce the State’s involvement in the banking sector and to get the banks funding themselves without the support of the Government and the central banks. However, both objectives will be next to impossible if the euro crisis continues to deteriorate.