Jobless Figure Rises Again

120 jobs are to be cut in the Cork area, Harris Corporation, A US technology firm has announced today.

69 full time staff and 50 part time staff are planned to be cut from the firm, the company had originally took over Tyco Electronic’ last May, resulting in the closure of the Cork facility.

The firm informed employees of plans to explore business plans and after an assessment of the company and its finances resulted in the closure of the Cork facility which plans to close by the end of June next year.

A generous redundancy settlement has been agreed and the closure will have no effect on other Harris Corporation plants in Ireland, said their spokesman.

Elsewhere in North of Ireland, the number of people officially listed as unemployed in the North has increased by 1,000 over the past month.

The jobless figure has risen to almost 54,000 people which is an increase of almost 80% over the past year.

This is the largest annual rise since officials began compiling seasonally-adjusted figures 14 years ago.

Penalty Charges For Late Mortgage Payment Cause Misery

Lenders who are issuing 1% penalty interest on missed mortgage payments have been accused of causing misery to their mortgage lenders.

A missed monthly payment of €2000 will acrue a €20 charge added to the outstanding sum, the 1% is charged on the overall arrears.

30,000 people could already by in arrears on their mortgage as the states economic downturn sends people deeper into debt.

AIB has admitted that they charge a 6% interest APR on missed mortgage payments, whilst Bank of Ireland says a charge of 0.5% a month is charged, or 6% a year is charged on missed mortgage payments.

Elsewhere, halifax have admitted charging their customers €12 on an unpaid direct debit mortgage payments.

Springboard, subprime lender has a fixed charge of €15 a month, a spokesman said “This charge applied for each month the account is in arrears”. Whilst other lenders who were contacted by the Irish Independant have reported that they do no impose penalty charges on late payments.

Noeline Blackwell, chief executive of Free Legal Aid Centre said that surcharges on arrears inflicted on making people’s financial problem much worse.

"Imposing penalty charges is adding enormously to the overall debt that people who are in arrears have to pay."

She also said that an additional €45 was being charged for each solicitors letters warning them about their arrears, were sent to lenders.

Ms Blackwell recommended that Financial Regulator should publish a list of the arrears charges and arrears policies of the banks.

She also said "It should not be up to journalists to find out this information about penalty charges and costs,".

More than 14,000 people are curently being helped to pay their mortgages by the Department of Social and Family Affairs!

Bank's To Buy Back Homes ?

A new scheme introduced by the government may allow people in financial difficulty and struggling to keep up with their mortgage repayments may be given the option to sell back their homes to banks and building societies.

This schemes and various other ones will be looked at to help rescue indebted homeowners.

Under the proposal banks and building societies would be forced to write a large chunk of the original mortgage and forced to buy back the property from struggling home owners.

The bank would then be obliged to lease the property back to the resident at a much lower rate than their original mortgage repayments.

Although the new scheme means that the lender would still owe the bank money, the lower monthly rently payments they do make will come off what is owed on the mortgage.

This is just one option being considered said Mr Eamon Tyan, Communications Minister, and that the details were still yet to be worked out.

Other option being explored are measures to reduce interest on mortgages, banks having to take equity in the home and longer mortgage terms.

138 homes have already been repossessed this year, also 14,000 people being in arrears with their mortgage payments.

If house prices continue to lunge almost 35,000 people could default on their mortgages next year, according to a report ESRI published last week.

Child Benefits To Be Cut By 20% ?

Economic and Social Research Institute has recommended that child benefit payments should be cut by a fifth.

Government plans for savings of  €4 billion in the 2010 budget will help stabilise the deficit of the states economic downturn, however, is will still be more than 4 times above levels allowed by the EU, said ESRI’s quarterly economic bulletin.

ESRI said that the deficit will reach 12.8% of gross domestic product next year which contrasts against 12.9% forecast for 2009 and the EU’s limit of 3%, even if the austerity steps are enacted.

NAMA is set to pay €54billion for banks commercial property loans, which is set to increase debt by 33% of GDP to close to 110%, said ESRI.

ESRI predicts that unemployment rate will rise by almost 15% next year with a gradual turn around in the states economy expected by the end of 2010.

However, DR Alan Barrett (an economist) must make €4billion savings, with the main focus on public spending.

“While tax increases will have to form part of the Budget package, the balance of adjustment should be made on current expenditure,” Dr Barrett said.

However, he did a more positive prediction on Irelands employment prospects:
“Underlying these annual forecasts is a quarterly profile in which we expect growth to return in the latter part of 2010, although at a very modest pace,” he said. “On employment, we are somewhat more optimistic now than when writing in July.

The numbers applying for unemployment benefits fell for the first time last month in almost 2 years, showed latest official figures.

€10 Airline Tax Damages Irelands Tourism Industry

The Tourism Renewal Group which was set up by the Government to boost Ireland tourism industry survive the recession is asking for the new €10 tax on airline tax on passengers to be scrapped!

They also recommended wages, utilities and local charges to be reduced for their tourism operators.

A whopping 130,000 people are employed in the Irish Tourism Industry, which is larger than the finance and agriculture services industry.

Chairman of the Tourism Renewal Group, Maurice Pratt, commented today that the €10 tax fee for passengers at Irish airport is turning people away from visiting Ireland, which is having a damaging affect Irelands tourism industry.

Further 80 Jobs Axed In Mid West

A further 80 jobs were axed yesterday in the mid-west, a region that has been hugely affected by the recession.

Tecontree announced their plans to cut 80 jobs at the stock exchange yesterday, which will reduced their workforce from 141 people to just 61 in Ireland, due to a “reduction  in demand and global economic conditions”.

"The situation is therefore one of potential collective redundancies and the company, with a view to reaching an agreement, will begin a consultation process over the coming days," the statement said.

Elsewhere 30 jobs are planned to be cut at firm Condron Concrete who produce concrete pipes in Tullamore, Co Ofally.

Irish Primary School Ask Pupil's To Bring In Toilet Roll

An Irish primary school were sent 720 toilet rolls by Kittensoft after they heard pupils had been asked to bring in their own toilet rolls to help the school save money, due to cuts in education grants.

Kittenssoft donated the toilet rolls to St John’s Girl’s National school in Carrigaline, county Cork after hearing of the schools financial struggle.

School principle O’Neil said they needed to explore ways in which they could cut their spending after several education grants were slashed by the government.

However, she did stress that children who had not brought in toilet roll would not be denied their original supplies.

“It isn’t that, if a child didn’t bring in a toilet roll, they would have no access to a toilet roll,”

“The toilet roll was to be kept in a box in the classroom and the bathrooms which would be replenished when the ones that were there were used.” said Ms O’Neil.

The school currently has 540 pupils, and have said that cutbacks had been made in areas such as school books and library book grants.

Ms O’Neil had sent out a letter to parents stating that would be asked to bring a toilet roll into school, at times when needed due to funding issues, which was gained a good response from parents, and she also believed they weren’t the only school struggling due to education cuts. 

Irish Households In Risk Of Negative Equity

196,000 Irish households with 1 in 3 with mortgages on negative equity may be in negative equity by year 2010, says Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).

House prices in 2007 fell which resulted in a small amount of people in negative equity at the end of the year (which affected mostly first time buyers with high loan to value ratios). Due to house prices continuing to fall in 2008 meant that mortgage borrowers were left with debt higher than house price at the end of last year, which is estimated to be over 57,000.

ESRI’s research paper shows that house prices have continued to fall in 2009, which is assumed that these figures are in line with ones forcasted in summer 09. If proven, it could well mean that by the end of 2009 house prices will drop by a further 30%. This could mean that the number of mortgages borrowers with mortgages debt that are higher than the price of their house may increase to over 116,000, up by 58,000 compared with figures in 2008.

GE Money Plan To Cut Upto 65 Jobs

GE Money plans to cut their Iirsh staff by 65 people as part of their restructuring plan.

The Us financial firm empoyes around 280 people in Ireland, with expectations to cut 50 jobs in their Shannon Free Zone, and a further 15 in Dublin.

The exact number will be decided over the next few weeks during their consultation process with staff.

However, the company has expressed that they plan to redeploy some of their affected employees to other areas which are more suited.

Ireland Fears Further Public Service Cutbacks

A survey commissioned by Impact has shown that half of Irish people they interviewed fear that they will be personally hit through threats to further cut back public services.

Impact has reported that almost half of its respondents have already been affected by cuts in health and education.

The union has plans to launch their own campaign against cutback today using the slogan “Public Services: Transformation Not Cuts”, which will be branded on billboards, leaflet drop to 1million households and advertisments on buses and trains.

They have already implemented ballots of its members in the public service, if the government implements more pay cuts.