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AN SSIA-STYLE scheme that would allow people to invest their savings into Small and Medium Enterprises would provide the sector with the shot in the arm it needs.
That’s what the new President of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Ireland thinks.
In his inaugural address, Cormac Fitzgerald that the government needs to encourage savers to invest some of the €90 billion currently on deposit into small businesses.
If savers were allowed to put some of their money into an account which would be lent to or invested in SMEs under the management of the bank and get full tax relief for it…this could divert billions of euro in funding into the sector.
Tax write off for investors
Under the proposed project, savers could get a 41 per cent tax relief on their invested funds.
He said: “Banks would be…better able to meet the funding needs of their business customers; SMEs would benefit through a new line of funding; and the country would benefit through job creation and an overall boost to the economy.”
He criticised existing programmes like the Employment Invesment Incentive Scheme, sayin that it was “too complex and costly”.
Breaking link with bad property debt ‘vital’
Fitzgerald called for a new approach to dealing with SMEs that are weighed down by the burden of property debt acquired during the boom
“The costs of servicing these debts are sucking the lifeblood out of viable SMEs and holding back growth and job creation.”
He said businesses should be allowed to take a loan holiday, which would “freeze and warehouse a portion of these debts for a period during which no further interest would accrue.”
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Such a shame to see a great city like Dublin reduced to something out of the walking dead.
100 years later, the only thing that prevents the population of Dublin from attempting a rebellion is that fact that those who would otherwise rebel are the walking dead.
How does anyone begin to fix a society that’s that rotten?
It’s 26 times worse than the 80s – In the eighties heroin was strictly a Dublin problem ….
Now it is a 26 county problem .
There was a girl slashed in Tipperary by drug dealers – I saw a young lad I used to teach in a rural Galway town strung out ….and when I was teaching him the young lads told me that heroin was a big problem in the town.
I attended a talk in N.U.I.G. given by the head of the Portugese Drugs Agency – or whatever it is called – There they have reduced the numbers of addicts from 100,000 to 50,000 since 1998.
I won’t go into the details of how they tackled it – But there wasn’t one politician or Garda drug officer at it. – Enough said !
The pushers are flogging tuborg in my local
There aren’t enough Christys in this city ,he’s highlighting this at every opportunity , is probably the only politician who has seen it firsthand on a nightly basis , is not just ‘talking the talk’
This is the price of the Illicit Drug Model.
Well said kate, Mr Burke should be in the Dail
Prohibition is the best way to multiply any city’s or country’s drug problem. Prohibition is drugogenic.
Make selling of heroin a jail term of 20 years and legalise non addictive drugs like marijuana. Send those addicted to Peru and do a scientifically studied drug called ayahuasca cure them and let’s start taxing a hugely popular drug marihuana and create employment and a viable economy as a result.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI3rix0uP0s – President Obama said in and interview recently with YouTube stars asking the questions.. that he expects more states to experiment with marijuana legalization, he went on to say “what we have done is instead of focusing on treatment, the same way we focused say with tobacco or drunk driving or other problems where we treat it as a public health problem, we’ve treated this exclusively as a criminal problem, and I think that it’s been counterproductive and it’s been devastating in a lot of minority communities. It presents the possibility at least of unequal application of the law and that has to be changed”
Our government still think Cannabis is far worse for your health than alcohol or/and tobacco products, when its actually quite the opposite!
Well they would – vested interests.
Hash and weed are addictive if u know any thing bout drugs ask any of the addicts on these clinics and they will tell you and also it is a gateway drug which leads you unto that circle of drugs and crime.
Check your facts mabe you wont look so thick
Yes, there has always been drugs in Dublin, but never have the Gardai turned such a blind eye to drug dealing in broad daylight as in the last few years. A cowardly failure of their public duty.
We can thank our drug policy for much of this mess. Legislated for heroin in 1961 and 1977. After 40 odd years of failure nothing has changed
Orla Ryan, I just realised you are a cracking looking lady.
Absolutely Christy. At a time when we are taking medical cards from disabled children let’s spend more money making junkies comfortable and sure give them a free house while you’re at it. The rest of us will be too busy working to notice eh?
Peter have you ever done a cost benefit analysis on getting a homeless person a home and a job?
It’s financially beneficial to sort our homelessness problem. Seems like your minds made up however.
You do know that social housing and affordable housing is important for welfare of the working poor, the working class and young professionals, especially considering Dublin’s high house prices, the poor avaliblity of credit and the shortage of rental properties.
Do you guys have a mortgage? If so are you happy that you’re expected to bear decades of debt to pay for your own home while the welfare classes never work a day in their lives and get handed a free house or flat in the city centre? I walk past them everyday on my way to work while they are still warm in their beds. This doesn’t describe all social housing tenants of course but it’s accurate for a sizable minority
Peter …..
The one thing we must always remember is that Ireland had the guts torn out of it during the dark days of R.CC.. domination ….
There are an awful lot of victims out there just trying to keep body and soul together as they say .
Also it is not that long a go that travellers lived on the side of Road in tents ..
we cannot complain about the homeless on the street dying and then complain about having dealt with what was a homeless epidemic when I was a child …
Having said that – I firmly believe that this section of society has been thrown a wedge of money and left to their own devices …. not good social policy !
Talk to a social worker or teacher who works in these areas and you might find that it is difficult to tar all with the same brush – an awful lot of decent warm hearted people in these areas ….
I always ask myself – ” I wonder how I would have worked out if daddy was a heroin addict and mommy was an alcoholic ?”
( stereotypical sexist I know – so swop them around in your head if you want )
I was watching R.T.E. Tonight and a figure of 220,000 was mentioned for a house in Dublin ..
One person working on the average industrial wage or two parents working on the minimum wage needs 7 times their salary to purchase a house based on these figures ..
Are our Bankers and Auctioneers suffering from supermodel syndrome ..
“I’m not getting out the application form for less than 220,000″
Not one bit in the new guidelines about curbing banker’s bonuses was there – the root cause as far as II am concerned for writing up bad debt during the boom !
Enda was quoted yesterday saying €30,000 was an achievable deposit , yes Enda , less than 4 weeks wages for you …
I would never bad mouth Limerick. O love the place but it really feels like our drug problem has esclated in recent times.I have never felt afraid in the city. I walked through the streets any time day or night and while at night it could be rowdy at the weekend it was still ok. Now though there are some places I would be wary if going as they are really full of addicts. They must have been moved from the street they usually hang out because they have taken root outside some supermarkets and they are pretty ” forthright” in their begging. Aldi will try to clear them Tescos don’t.Dunnes seems ok too. Regardless it’s really hard trying to rin the gauntlet of three addicts looking for money. They almost come into the cars to you. There used to be only one guy who begged. He walked away if you said no and was not in any way aggressive. I don’t even see him anymore. I think he must have gotten forced out by the others.
Have to respect Burke for acknowledging that homelessness is a complex issue.
I wish TV3 and other such ‘quality’ broadcasters, would do more to explore homelessness, its causes and the real people on the street and why they are on the street than launch another exploitative series about Travellers.
A separate matter; drug use, ultimately, all originates in poor personal choices and, probably, poor parenting in too many cases. ‘The System’, ‘The Government’ and ‘Austerity’ cannot be blamed before the individual accepts their role in making the personal choice.
It’s ironic that the best way to respond to that comment is to combine two alternative names for drugs.
Horseshit!
Personal choice? Tell a 14 year old who runs up a drug debt in a disadvantaged area has much of a choice. Or even that the choices made at the time were those of a responsible adult.
Why don’t all 14 year olds indulge themselves in drugs then? Is it always someone else’s fault?
Circumstances they are born into. Every heard of the term ‘the lottery of birth’?
You cannot blame one single person as every individual falls under certain circumstances. Obviously a certain level of blame goes to the individual but your assumption that it’s all their fault is laughable.
I first smoked hash when I was 14.
Never ran up a drug debt because I never got any on tick.
Smoked it every day for about 2 years between the ages of 15 and 17.
Lottery of birth?
I grew up in a council estate to working class parents.
I chose to smoke hash. I chose not to use anything stronger than that, even when dealers offered it for free.
It’s all about personal choice.
So the naive deserve to be punished?
I’ve a cousin who is on the autism spectrum and lives in a ‘deprived’ area. He’s 16 and has drug debts. His mother is being threatened with harm. The state had no help for him as a kid. No therapists. No special care. No psychiatric assessment…
So sit back and judge him but you really have no idea why some people are in these situations.
I’ve seen beautiful kids destroyed by pushers before they have a chance to grow.
Less judgement. Less holier than thou. More compassion.
Martin, I’m staggered by the lack of empathy which the Irish public are displaying and, much as I’d love to blame the recession for it I can’t – because it seems to be in us. We were equally as callous and uncaring during the so-called ‘boom’, it was a case of ‘well I’m ok so I don’t care about him/her’. I don’t believe anything will change until we get some well-needed education and having done that, develop some sense of empathy for our neighbour.
Land of a Thousand Welcomes? Don’t think so.
How not to become addicted to heroin in one easy step: Don’t use it.
I know that some people are going to come along and say this and that about alcohol, but let’s be honest here. Heroin is far more addictive.
Then you’ll tell me that it’s ok in regulated doses, and that you can live a normal life while being addicted to heroin. Yeah. You’re still addicted to heroin, and need your two hits a day.
Please don’t compare alcohol and heroin. Especially to an Irish audience. Most of us drink, and still live normal lives. The same cannot be said of heroin addicts. Regular use of heroin will lead to addiction because of the physical factor. The same cannot be said of alcohol.
Oh, right. Alcoholics can die from withdrawal. This is true. However, the vast majority of people who drink on a regular basis do not become alcoholics, while the vast majority of heroin users do become addicted.
Solution: Don’t use it in the first place.
Yours,
Not a rocket scientist.
You must work on Government policy then?
Hate the way he put’s hash in there, not many ppl smoke hash these days..
As with all addictions, there are only two outcomes possible, death or recovery. And, only the addict can decide which option to choose. Fact. No amount of hand-wringing or pity or throwing money or resources at an addict can make them clean & sober. Addicts must reach their own personal “rock bottom” to even think about sobriety, and if they do & still choose to stay in addiction, then, que sera, sera.
I stopped reading at “fact”. Who does that anymore?
Fact: Ultra-liberals will still claim that they can help people who don’t want to be helped.
Fact: homeless people are more costly to society than it costs to buy them a home and a treatment programme.
Fact 2: right wing conservatives are too dumb to comprehend this. They created the problem in the first place with their misuse of drugs act, must have prefered everyone been on the sauce to the herb.
When an drug addict hits their rock bottom, as so many havè, there needs to be services in place immediately to help. Hitting rock bottom and then being told to go on long waiting list just causes despair and results in further addictive and destructive behaviours. Help needs to be available as needed. NOW
Give them more welfare worked well so far that’s the lefts Soulations to everything
The left have a much more complex policy than your tripe, they can also spell properly.
I’m guessing ‘Soulation’ was in your auto correct. Just googled it there. So whats the right wing christian way to solve the problem. Pray?
This implies the you’ve searched ‘Soulation’ more than ‘solution’….
The left will always say “We need more social housing, more drug treatment places, more education and training places, more drug injecting facilities, more needle exchanges, more addiction councillors”. More more more more more. It results in millions being spent and millions being wasted.
Sometimes….sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Some people need a kick up the ass to get their act together.
We should be looking at how they deal with illegal drug addiction in Texas as much as we look how they deal with it in Sweden.
The left way isn’t always the right way. :-)
So strongarm tactics by the right is the solution …
Hitler was an amphetamine addict and yet the Nazis didn’t take too kindly to drug addicts !
SOMETIMES. But not ALL OF THE TIMES. THATS THE FU#KING PROBLEM!!
f*ck how the Swiss, the Texans mismanage their drug situations
In Texas you’d be banged up in a semi privatised prison straight away for years. No mercy. Once in prison, they have to work 8 hours a day for $1.30 a day. Things from footwear to phone calls home need to be bought with this money. Visits from family are extremely few and far between.
Texas and Sweden both spend more money on their drug problems than Holland and Portugal where decriminalisation has saved money, lives and lowered youth drug use. Texas drug policy is a joke and before 2020 they will have changed it.
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, may you strike down the unbelievers.
*crickets*
Uugh……….uuuugghh………..*burp*
False alarm everybody. I’m OK.
Ha! ‘everybody’…..I’m so lonely
Just say no
Going any craps won’t help or solve any problems
Has been a tremendous success, nancy.
have your say