Two-time Olympic gold medallist enlists as alarm grows over war that threatens to engulf Addis Ababa
The two-time Olympic gold medallist Haile Gebrselassie has announced he is enlisting in the Ethiopian military to fight an insurgency that threatens the capital, Addis Ababa.
Gebrselassie, who set 27 long-distance running records, told Reuters he was joining up on Wednesday. The Olympic silver medallist runner Feyisa Lilesa would also enlist, local media reported.
Continue reading...Micheál Martin calls for resolution on Northern Ireland, saying: ‘don’t leave it until Christmas Eve this year’
The Irish prime minister, Micheál Martin, has said the UK and EU need to “knuckle down” and resolve the dispute over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit arrangements.
The UK’s Brexit minister, Lord Frost, will hold further talks with the European Commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, on Friday, with the UK still warning it could unilaterally suspend parts of the Northern Ireland deal unless major changes are made.
Continue reading...It is a grim irony that my Irish family – paying to live on land colonised by the English – was involved in alienating Māori from their land
On the morning of the5 November 1881 my great-grandfather, Andrew Gilhooly, stood alongside 1,588 other men, waiting to commence the invasion of Parihaka pā (settlement), home to the great pacifist leaders Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi and their people. He would have participated in the weeks and months of destruction and despoliation – of people, property and cultivations – that followed.
Andrew remained at Parihaka – which is on the west coast of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand – as part of the Armed Constabulary’s occupying force until late 1884. The occupation was not benign: on one occasion constables tore down 12 houses in retaliation for attempts by neighbouring Māori to bring goods into Parihaka (the attempt to feed starving people was dismissed by the Native Minister as being “in every way objectionable”).
Continue reading...Simon Coveney accuses British government of ‘deliberately forcing breakdown’ in negotiations over Northern Ireland
The prospect of a trade war between the UK and the EU has edged closer, with Ireland giving the clearest hint yet that Brussels plans to suspend the entire trade deal struck last December if the British government suspends the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol.
The Irish foreign minister, Simon Coveney, accused the UK of “deliberately forcing a breakdown” in negotiations over Northern Ireland, adding that there was still time to step back from the brink.
Continue reading...Person alleged to have made threat during a phone call to a female Labour politician
A British national has been arrested in Ireland on suspicion of making threats to kill a sitting Labour MP.
A 41-year-old man was detained in the Cork suburb of Douglas on Saturday and brought to the Brideswell Garda station for questioning.
Continue reading...Analysts question if Dublin’s reputation as a leading tech hub could be undermined by new 15% tax rate
Ten years ago Dublin was nicknamed Silicon Valley’s “home from home” with tech superstars including Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk queueing up to snap up office space, avail themselves of local Irish hospitality and low tax.
But while the decision of Google, Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, eBay, Amazon and more recently TikTok to locate their European headquarters in the Irish capital helped cement its reputation as one of the region’s leading tech hubs, questions are now being asked about whether they will stay.
Earlier this month Ireland signed up to landmark reforms for a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15%, up from the current level of 12.5% set by Dublin, in the biggest shifts for the country’s tax system in almost 20 years.
Some analysts argued the nation’s economic model could be badly undermined, while the Irish finance minister, Paschal Donohoe, said earlier this year that up to €2bn (£1.7bn) a year in tax revenue could be lost by 2025. However, there are hopes the changes might not prove as existential as they first seem.
“In the short to medium term, no, there won’t be an exodus, the change from 12.5% to 15% is not that significant,” said Seamus Coffey, an economist at University College Cork and former chair of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council.
Ireland had played hardball in global tax talks taking place between 140 countries at the OECD in Paris, following almost a decade of failure among world leaders to agree reforms that would equip the taxation regime for the digital age.
Dublin refused to join an accord earlier this year, and only relented earlier this month at the 11th hour of negotiations after securing a key concession – earlier plans calling for a minimum rate of “at least” 15% were dropped, giving the government more certainty that it would not be ratcheted higher in future.
However, the reality is that many big tech firms never paid the 12.5% headline rate set by Ireland in the first place.
A Bloomberg investigation in 2010 showed how Google had cut its overseas tax rate to just 2.4% using an aggressive avoidance scheme dubbed the “Double Irish, Dutch sandwich” to effectively shuffle revenues made across Europe offshore to places like Bermuda, where the tax rate was zero.
Those schemes were outlawed in 2015, giving companies five years’ notice to comply.
However, while such arrangements undoubtedly helped attract Google and Facebook to Ireland in the noughties, they were merely the latest in a wave of more than 1,500 foreign firms – 800 of them American – lured in by the low-tax ethos of the country’s Industrial Development Agency since its foundation in 1949.
Before them IBM, Intel, Pfizer and Apple were shown the red carpet. For at least a decade Allergan has been making the world’s supply of Botox in Westport, County Mayo, on the country’s windswept Atlantic coast.
“The low tax rate started in the 1960s at zero and then went to 10%,” said Coffey. “The point of it was never to generate corporate tax revenue, but to use relatively low corporate tax to attract the companies to set up in Ireland and let them build big factories and facilities. And then we have employment.”
There are other factors tempting in multinationals. Chinese-owned TikTok set up its Dublin HQ in 2018 long after the writing was on the wall for the tax avoidance loophole.
“Young companies focus on things that will either kill them or help them scale in the near future. Corporate tax isn’t one of them,” said Stephen McIntyre, former head of Twitter in Ireland and a partner in Frontline Ventures, a venture capital firm in Dublin and London set up to help US tech firms expand in Europe.
Joe Biden and the OECD want to promote this idea of competing on grounds other than tax, viewing the reforms as ending the “race to the bottom” between countries.
Study prompts call for reforms to safeguard conditions of fishers from countries including the Philippines, Egypt, Ghana and Indonesia
Racist insults, verbal abuse, long working hours with few breaks and pay below the legal minimum wage are “common workplace experiences” of migrant workers in the Irish fishing sector, says a new study.
The report, conducted by Maynooth University’s Department of Law, comes four months after a damning assessment by the US state department over Ireland’s failure to combat human trafficking, which stated that undocumented workers on Irish vessels are vulnerable to trafficking and forced labour.
Continue reading...Point will come when EU says ‘enough, we cannot compromise any more’, warns Irish foreign minister
The EU is close to the end of the road with the UK over the Northern Ireland protocol, accusing David Frost, the Brexit minister, of trying to undermine serious attempts to solve the problem, the Irish foreign minister has said.
Simon Coveney said he had spoken to Lord Frost’s counterpart, the European Commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, on Sunday. They have agreed there would come a point when “the EU will say: enough, we cannot compromise any more”, Coveney said.
Continue reading...EU leaders urged to push back against No 10’s brinkmanship over role of European Court of Justice
Fears that the UK is heading for a trade war with the EU have been fuelled by strong indications from the government that proposals to be unveiled in Brussels on Wednesday over Brexit arrangements do not go far enough.
The Brexit minister, Lord Frost, will use a speech in Portugal on Tuesday to say that scrapping its prohibition on British sausages to resolve the dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol do not meet the UK and unionists demands.
Continue reading...Tech titans came to Ireland for its tax lures – but may now stay despite Dublin’s agreement to raise its rates
Ireland has dropped its low-tax policy after months of wrangling over the fine print of an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) agreement to operate a 15% minimum tax rate in more than 130 countries.
Why was Ireland key to a deal on taxing multinationals?
Continue reading...Low-tax policy of past 18 years had attracted multinationals such as Google and Facebook to Dublin
Ireland has dropped its cornerstone low-tax policy of the past 18 years, which helped persuade some of the world’s biggest companies, including Google and Facebook, to site their European headquarters in Dublin.
The decision comes after months of wrangling over the fine print of an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) agreement to operate a 15% minimum tax rate in more than 130 countries.
Continue reading...Thousands could be left homeless in rural Ireland because of devastating building defect
Homeowners in Ireland hit by a devastating building defect that causes walls to “crumble like Weetabix” are set to reject a government compensation scheme unless it offers to cover 100% of their costs.
Campaigners say the prospect of dream homes being demolished is causing people to kill themselves and families to break up, and that thousands of people could be left homeless in rural Ireland.
Continue reading...Almost 140 countries understood to be in final OECD talks on measures to stop firms moving profits to tax havens
Almost 140 countries are edging closer to a global deal on the taxation of multinationals, with agreement on a minimum 15% rate of corporation tax set to be announced as part of a landmark statement at the OECD in Paris on Friday.
Governments representing more than 90% of the world economy are understood to be in the final stages of talks on a global minimum rate and other measures designed to stop multinationals shifting profits into tax havens.
Continue reading...There has been a chronic mistreatment of workers in the country’s meat industry, according to unions
Read more: exploitation of meat plant workers rife across UK and Europe
In spring 2018, Alina Serbenco’s husband, Vasile, sat in a fast-food outlet in Dublin and plugged his mobile phone into a socket to recharge. It had been only a few months since he had moved from Romania to take up a job in a car wash, but he was being paid less than half the minimum wage and could not send money home to Alina and their two children. Homeless and living in a car, Vasile urgently needed a new job.
As he scrolled through Facebook, he spotted an advert for a job in a meat factory. It was posted by Irish employment agency AA Euro, a specialist recruitment consultancy working with companies in the agricultural, food processing, construction and mining industries, which has offices across the EU, including in Romania, Poland and the Netherlands. The job offer was up to 70 hours a week of work for just over the minimum wage and a room in a house for about €60 (£51.50) a week. Vasile decided to apply.
Continue reading...Irish government figures come days after M&S says it is scrapping 800 lines due to ‘excessive paperwork’
Exports from Great Britain to Ireland fell by almost £2.5bn in the first seven months of the year with Brexit emerging as a major factor, according to official Irish government data.
The figures from Ireland’s Central Statistics Office (CSO) come just days after Marks & Spencer said it was scrapping 800 product lines from its stores in the republic of Ireland because of “excessive paperwork” and health controls on food.
Continue reading...Campaigners fear ban emboldens anti-choice governments as more aggressive opposition, better organised and funded, spreads from US
The new anti-abortion law in Texas is a “terrifying” reminder of the fragility of hard-won rights, pro-choice activists have said, as they warn of a “more aggressive, much better organised [and] better funded” global opposition movement.
Pro-choice campaigners have seen several victories in recent years, including in Ireland, Argentina and, most recently, Mexico, where the supreme court ruled last week that criminalising abortion was unconstitutional. Another is hoped for later this month when the tiny enclave of San Marino, landlocked within Italy, holds a highly charged referendum.
Continue reading...Minister says government will not ‘sweep away’ NI Brexit protocol, but renews demands for major changes
The UK will not “sweep away” the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol, despite renewed calls for its abolition by the Democratic Unionist party, the Brexit minister has said.
However, David Frost renewed his demands for fundamental changes on its implementation, warning the row could have a long-term chilling effect on wider EU-UK relations unless it was resolved.
Continue reading...Double Booker prize winner tells La Repubblica she may take Irish citizenship to feel European again
Hilary Mantel has said she feels “ashamed” by the UK government’s treatment of migrants and asylum seekers and is intending to become an Irish citizen to “become a European again”.
In a wide-ranging interview with La Repubblica, the twice Booker prize-winning novelist also gave her view on the monarchy, told how endometriosis has “devastated my life”, and how Boris Johnson “should not be in public life”. She also addresses the criticism of JK Rowling and her stance on transgender rights.
Continue reading...Corrinne and Brett Giles live in Donegal and Derry counties due to ‘borderline unconstitutional’ application of immigration rule
A South African doctor and her British husband are living on either side of the Irish border because of what one MP called a “borderline unconstitutional” application of post-Brexit immigration rules.
Corrinne and Brett Giles live 25 miles apart in Donegal and Derry counties respectively, with Corrinne in a “constant state of anxiety” waiting for a family permit to join her husband in the UK.
Continue reading...Trees, grasses and wildlife are returning as Lord Randal Plunkett recreates a vanished landscape in County Meath
Lord Randal Plunkett strides through the hip-high grass of Dunsany, a 650-hectare (1,600-acre) estate in the middle of Ireland, trailed by an invisible swarm of midges and his four jack russell terriers: Tiny, Lumpy, Chow and Beavis & Butt-Head.
The cattle and sheep are long gone, so too are the lawns and many of the crops. In their place is a riot of shrubs, flowers and trees, along with insects and creatures that call this fledgling wilderness their home.
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