Some of you may have always suspected that NAMA will be a body with close links to FF. This appears to be the smoking gun. Indeed, I’d say that this story doesn’t leave mushroom for doubts any more.
There has been a lot of discussion in recent months about the scale of tax reliefs in Ireland and I’ve been planning to write a couple of posts on this topic. In relation to this issue, an opinion that is commonly expressed by leading figures in the Irish media is that the very richest in Ireland pay very little in tax because of these reliefs.
John Gibbons calls for nuclear power in Ireland in today’s Irish Times.
There are all sorts of issues with nuclear power. In the medium term, nuclear power cannot expand much because of constraints on manufacturing capacity (particularly of vessels) and on the number of nuclear engineers. More generally, the big issue with nuclear power is neither waste nor security (both of which are largely under control if you employ qualified people), but proliferation. As there are more nuclear power stations and more nuclear engineers, chances rise that nasty people will get their hands on a dirty bomb or worse.
Nuclear power is irrelevant for Ireland. Nuclear power provides baseload. The current baseload power station, MoneyPoint, will retire before 2025. You cannot plan, permit and build a nuclear power station in less than 15 years. The next opportunity for nuclear in Ireland is when MoneyPoint’s successor will retire, around 2065.
Besides, nuclear and wind power do not mix well, because the amount of wind that Ireland is committed to requires a power plant that is more flexible than nuclear can be.
The NTMA has released its review of its 2009 activities. Link here.
In relation to the coming year, the report says that “The NTMA plans to raise up to €20 billion in the bond markets in 2010. This requirement is significantly less than in 2009 because of a smaller projected Exchequer deficit of €18.7 billion and a lower refinancing requirement of €1.2 billion.”
These figures do not include any allowance for any borrowing that may be triggered by bank recapitalisation requirements. That said, the National Pension Reserve Fund had a good year thanks to the rise in international stock markets and its value now stands at €22.3 billion. Excluding the €7 billion held in preference shares in AIB and BOI, this leaves €15 billion that could, potentially, be used to recapitalise the banks without borrowing.
The release can be found here.
While 2007 seems a long time ago it is interesting to see that county level household disposable incomes have been converging (since 2001 the differences between counties have converged back roughly to mid 90’s levels) but GVA has continued to diverge.