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EVERY WEEK, TheJournal.ie offers a selection of statistics and numerical nuggets to help you digest the week that has just passed.
7,200,000,000 -The value of the fraud which three former top bank officials were charged with at Dublin District Court this week.
108 million – The amount in euros that the HSE wants to save in pay costs next year – but it still isn’t sure where the savings will come from.
30 million – The number of passengers who took a trip on the Luas this year – an increase of roughly half a million on last year.
1,000,000 – The number of American tourists who visited Ireland this year. The one millionth visitor got a free pair of return tickets this week for their next trip.
490,000 – The amount AIB was fined by the Central Bank for breaking regulations.
89,872 – The number of households on the waiting list for social housing.
25,000 - The number of homes and businesses which were left without electricity at the peak of the disruption caused by heavy winds and strong rain on Wednesday evening.
80 – The number of months in prison that Michaella McCollum Connolly and Melissa Reid were each sentenced to this week for smuggling cocaine.
35 – The number of years that former LostProphets singer Ian Watkins has been sentenced to for a series of child sexual assault offences.
25 – The percentage drop in donations to St Vincent de Paul this Christmas. The charity said the number of people donating has remained steady but people don’t have as much to donate.
13 – The percentage of people who voted Yes when they actually meant No in the referendum on whether or not to retain the Seanad, according to a Referendum Commission report.
10.5 – The percentage of Ireland’s total land area which is forest, according to the latest National Forestry Survey.
4 – The number of days until Christmas. Are you all set?
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Thanks for that Gavan.
i now feel informed ;) cheers
Yep, good summary Gavan. Thanks.
Indeed, that explainer is really useful – thanks Gavan
Great to see that Gavan can translate this into ordinary English. Other Media , take note.
I find it rather galling that this was only considered when Spain needed a bailout. It seems a much more logical way of using bailout funds. Were we not important enough for this kind of consideration 2 years ago?
Unfortunately, Chan, a collapse of Spain’s banking system would have a far greater effect on the stability of the Euro than what has happened in Ireland. Also worth noting that the approach to bank financing in Europe and the priority for growth has undergone a sea-change since the election of Francois Hollande in France. It’s not an increasingly irrelevant Britain that the Taoiseach should be looking to, but France.
Obviously not. Just shows what our European “partners” actually think of us: expendable paddies.
Yea Desmond, obviously Spains problems would have had a greater knock on. Its not about that though, its about what is the best way to distribute bank bailout funds, regardless of how big or small the bailout? I mean, that question should be asked at the start of any negotiations and the answer should be the same for everyone.
Even if a deal is somehow worked out to apply this retroactively to all the money we put into the banks, a significant amount of damage has already been done(in terms of cost of borrowing, subsequent budgets since the bailout etc.) because this wasnt considered for us 2 years ago.
Ah Cmon Stephen, when are you going to realise that most of these countries have cities have the population of Ireland?
Why should they bother changing everything to suit a small population?
You dont have to like it, but there it is
They didn’t do it this way for Ireland because the government decided to pay it with our money.
Thank you Spain. Thank you Italy. This deal goes to show what can happen when leaders take their courage in their hands and say “enough is enough”. While Enda & Eamonn will try to claim credit for this “coup” we know it only came about because Spain & Italy held firm, or as the media called it last night “held the summit to ransom” on this issue.
It would be great if we had Leaders with such courage.
It may say more about how much size matters than the courage of anyone. In European terms, like it or not, we are tiny. When you are big your voice is louder, your leverage greater and your ‘courage’ more likely to be rewarded.
Spot on, Katie. We’re a yappy teacup chihuahua in a room full of mastiffs and nothing more.
Aye but if a chihuahua ever decided to chomp on someones balls it could still be painful.
Not really guys. The capacity of Ireland to ‘hold a summit to ransom’ depends not on the size of the nation but the exposure of european banks to their banking debt. As time has rolled on and Ireland has been the star pupil, or mug to be more appropriate, our hand has weakend.
If the. Government can recoup 10s of billions from the banks does this mean that it can invest this money in infrastructure and get the domestic economy growing again?nBecause if this is so its great news!n
In theory Stefan, this would be fantastic. Europe seems a little brighter this morning!
I wouldn’t hold my breath
Somehow i don’t think money gained from this can go anywhere other than to pay off some of our loans.. But the money saved by doing that could very well go back into such things alright..
It’s a very interesting move anyway. If we can get the money back out of the banks and shift their debt into the ESM we’ll be doing well.
Essentially we’ll be letting the banks from the different countries dip into the ESM and the liability will be spread throughout the EU, as opposed to just on the back of the taxpayers in individual countries.
Given our maximum exposure to the ESM as taxpayers is €11bn in the case it gets fully used we as a country have the potential to benefit hugely from this.
Seems to be good news overall. I’m not a fan I all this propping up of private companies but if it’s going to happen, as Europe seems to want it to, then at least the burden will be shared and weighted on the various countries in a much more fair and inclusive way.
Good stuff.
Can I ask a dumb question?
This new deal in Europe. I see how it helps Spain – there are private banks there that need bailing out. The state don’t want to take on the debt that is necessary to recapitalise them so they have successfully gotten the ESM/EFSF to do it instead. Great for Spain.
This arrangement will now retrospectively apply for us – so the promissory note will be torn up and Anglo etc will be refinanced from the ESM rather than via money our Central Bank printed and were going to recoup and tear up over the next 20 years.
Here’s my question. As we own Anglo and AIB how does this really change things for us?Ultimately the state still owes all the money – for Spain it means that the banks remain prviate and are being directly funded by Europe. For us they’re still just another arm of the state so regardless of how they get their funding, it’s still owed by us as a country.
We will have to agree with Europe to remove the bank guarantee and leave ESM on the hook for the debts or “sell” Anglo and AIB to ESM for it to be of any benefit I would have thought? Or am I missing the point?
Good question. Realistically the advantage is that it provides an opportunity for a blank canvas in terms of when we have to make our repayments. The annual €3.06bn repayment for the promissory notes could be replaced with something more more manageable, with smaller repayments spread over a far longer time.
While the government (as the owner) is still on the hook, the fact that the banks themselves would owe the money means that it could also be easier to spin those banks off and sell them back into private hands. Nobody would buy AIB if they were taking on an institution that was still tied at the limb to the Irish government in terms of money flowing in and out, but they might buy it if it’s dealing with a direct European authority which, to all intents, would be acting no differently than a central bank.
So it’s as I thought. For now this is just a balance sheet/accounting change from an Irish perspective. Cue the next epic topic of discussion for the next 18 months. Can we get ESM to take on the banking debt?The answer to that is likely to be dependent on how much trouble Spain and Italy (and Greece) are in this time next year. The more trouble they’re in, the better off we are unfortunately.
There is no such thing as a dumb / stupid question. However there are plenty of stupid / ludicrous answers.
(Not referring to the answers to your question)
It is astonishing how often the essential fundamental obvious necessary question is not asked
So basically we (the increasingly rare Irish taxpayers) are still on the hook for the cash beacuse we didn’t get “the Spanish deal” at the time! We might be able to restructure the loans though. This is a bit of a step forward but really nothing significant. We still have to pay it all back. There is nothing equitable about this kind of deal. If we originally got the same deal as Spain then the state would not have recapitalized the banks and we would not have the sovereign debt. Based on your analysis here Ireland will be further punished (as compared to Spain) for having being good Europeans and doing what we were told to do by the European powers.
It should be possible (and the only fair deal) to put us in roughly the situation we would be in now if we had received “the Spanish deal” at the time of the guarantee. Let’s not confuse actual sovereign debt incurred to run the country with that incurred bailing out the banks. Of course the former is our debt.
Yeah, this is still bull.
The money printed out of thin air is still lent to us at interest. Since we cannot print our own money, the interest will never be paid off, as it wont exist in the first place.
This isnt a deal as the tax payer is still “on the hook” nonsense.
Fiscal union, the rothschilds win and conquer europe without dropping a bomb or firing a single bullet.
Everything else is just baseless rhetoric and goal posts that constantly move.
As Mayer Amschel Rothschild said:
“Give me control over a nation’s currency and I don’t care who makes the laws.”
Nice to see some leaders standing up for their national interests. Kudos all round to Spain and Italy and France.
Ireland amounts to nothing more in the overall Euro Zone economic outlook than an offshore nuclear testing atoll or a kind of test lab located way down the corridor from the office where the experiments are devised. When the rot was getting out of hand in the more important bigger economies then something was done. If there is anything we can learn from this it’s that the Euro Zone/EU is not a community of equals, it’s a community where the forces of market economics outweigh the niceties and well meaning policies of post war integration and smaller countries isolated by location and economy of scale are reduced to sycophantic, begging bowl approaches answered only in the interest of keeping the experimental lab rat living to complete the observations and devise the next strategy and approach. The new deal fits hand in glove for Italy, Spain but the Irish landscape littered with the fall out of the disastrous bank guarantee/bailout and the toxic combination of the NTMA/NAMA where the citizen of the state is lumbered with the results of the corruption and mismanagement of our banking, political, and corporate management structures.
…is completely another story.
Could not agree wit you more. I find it hugely worrying that people are willing to accept that this change in policy is only possible because of the economic size of Italy and Spain. What started off as a group of countries looking to trade on equal terms has become a conglomerate of the four larger economies and the rest are just tagging along. What happened to solidarity and equal partnership? I expect that I should be treated as equal to my counterpart in Berlin as to my fellow European in Athens, but no, this has just proved that in Europe all are equal but some are more equal than others.
With regard to it being necessary for the bank to return our money-pigs will fly that day or I shall eat my hat.
All smoke and mirrors in my opinion. The money is still only going to be printed for the purpose of band bank debts. And someone is still going to have to pay it back somewhere. These same banks will be useless unless they have huge debt write offs applied to them. Cue the Irish tax payer. Why do I get the feeling that the money we’ve (the taxpayers) poured into the banks will be the money written off. We, the people, will have been relieved of tens of billions for nothing only corporate profit. So in essence money will be printed to make bankers wealthy again just after the public coffers have been emptied and still not one banker has been held to account. Remember people, banks, unlike every other private enterprise, never go bust. Some scam if you can get away with it.
After listening to our minister for finance, I dont get the feeling we should celebrate just yet, seemingly the deal is a great breakthrough for the Country LONG TERM, we are still facing a woeful budget….
Thank you Gavan, that was needed!
Still a bankrupt slave.
16 years? Jaysus.
i dunno is allowing private banks access to public funds ever a good idea. i no its not the case in ireland as theyre mosts nationalised or part nationalised, but a lot in europe aren’t
That’s a good point and is why the funds can only be accessed in this way when a European banking union is established, particularly after a European banking regulator is set up.
To me nothing has changed. The debts/loans have been extended over a longer timeframe so our children and grandchildren will be repaying these debts in 50 years time. Clearly Germany and Merkel (eyeing her re-election in 2014) have won out. No money will be printed to wipe out debts. I saw a headline that a stimulus package has been agreed. This is needed but again it is more long term debt. A 2 year credit union loan has been extended to 10 years.
what about the 10 bilion is it we have to contribute to bailout fund
have your say