Today campaigners of the Robin Hood Tax Campaign presented a cheque for €1.8bn at Leinster House in Dublin. It represents the amount of revenue a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) could raise over the 5 year lifespan of the next Government. Also called the Robin Hood Tax, its implementation would oblige financial institutions to pay a tiny tax on trading in bonds, shares and derivatives. read full story / add a comment

Media advisory - For immediate release: Monday, 29 February 2016

Dangerous CETA deal must be rejected.

Promises from the EU and Canada that they have improved the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) are fooling no-one, according to Friends of the Earth Europe. It remains a dangerous agreement that gives special right to corporations and threatens our democracy and the environment, says the group.
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The Sunday Business Post ran a story claiming that vulture funds who bought up the loan books of Irish financial institutions are likely to step up pressure for payment after the general election.

The report in the Sunday Business Post is a terrible warning of what is to come. Far from years where we enjoy a new ‘fiscal space’ there is more economic turmoil ahead.

US vulture funds were encouraged to come into this country to buy up debt at incredibly low prices. The debts of both mortgage holders and small business enterprises became another opportunity for profit making. read full story / add a comment

Puerto Rico's House of Representatives approved legislation to reform its highly indebted public utility company "PREPA." read full story / add a comment

US District Judge Thomas Griesa ordered "hold-out" investors on Thursday to explain why various sanctions on Argentina should not be lifted. read full story / add a comment

Victory Clare County Council voted to reject the TTIP( Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) on Mon 8 feb.
It’s official – Clare is now Ireland’s first TTIP Free Zone!

Monday night was a milestone moment in our fight to stop the toxic deal TTIP. Following a campaign led by Uplift members, Clare County Council passed a motion to declare the county a TTIP Free Zone. read full story / add a comment

Steve Keen is the author of Debunking Economics. He is critical of Neo-Classical Economics read full story / add a comment

Forget the official Banking Inquiry report because Joe Higgins has written a much more better one and it asks the rights questions and gets to the heart of the matter by putting the whole saga in its proper context -something which the official report couldn't thing as it would mean asking fundamental questions. Indeed the inquriy itself and official report have been steeped in controversary with allegations of coverup because of numerous reports of key officials and whistleblowers in the regulator office and central bank were ignored and their evidence never making into the inquiry. The whistleblower made a formal complaint under the Protected Disclosures Act and (Village Magazine) "outlining a range of detailed concerns about how the Central Bank and some of its legal representatives were omitting huge swathes of vital documents, redacting many of the most crucial pieces of evidence, and delaying release of vital material until it was too late to use them in briefings for public hearings – in at least one case handing them over 24 hours before a scheduled interview about them." read full story / add a comment

The US House of Representatives held its second hearing on Puerto Rico's debt crisis this year. The hearing focused on potential legislative solutions including bankruptcy protection and an economic oversight board. read full story / add a comment

TASC today released an equality analysis of Budget 2016, which analysed both the tax and spending changes. It shows that the tax cuts announced will give the greatest benefit to a single person earning €70,000, which is the same “sweet spot” as last year’s budget.

The report notes that changes announced in the Budget have to be considered in light of the fact that three-quarters of the pre-tax income gains in the last five years have gone those earning €70,000 and above read full story / add a comment

One year after the LuxLeaks scandal, a new report Fifty Shades of Tax Dodging finds that most EU countries continue to uphold secretive tax systems that are riddled with loopholes. The 2015 Stop Tax Dodging report, released in Ireland on 4th November by Debt & Development Coalition Ireland (DDCI) scrutinises the role of the EU in the global tax crisis. The Irish chapter of the report details how Ireland announced a gradual phase-out of rules that allowed the controversial ‘Double Irish’ tax avoidance scheme, but continues to allow corporate structures operate systems for tax rulings, transfer pricing and intellectual property that allow multinational corporations to avoid taxes on an enormous scale. read full story / add a comment

The European Parliament is about to make another attempt to pass a resolution on the EU-US trade deal TTIP this Wednesday. Ahead of this critical vote, an alliance of over 480 organisations from across Europe is calling on MEPs to take the strong resistance from citizens seriously. 2.3 million Europeans have signed a self-organised European Citizens' Initiative that calls for an end of the TTIP negotiations. All MEPs today received the following letter in their native language, signed by the Stop TTIP organisations in their respective country: read full story / add a comment

The drip feed of questionable deals carried out by NAMA is well under way. Regularly now, we see information reaching the public domain whereby NAMA have sold stressed assets at less than their real value and the purchasers are turning them over within 2 years, at profit ranging from 30% to 40%/ The purchasers are mostly foreign investment funds – ‘vulture funds ‘ – who have picked on the carcass of the stressed Irish property market. Many of them have retained the assets, and become serious players in the residential rental market in Ireland, especially Dublin, and have developed a controlling influence, managing to drive up rents astronomically in our capital city. This all doesn’t make them evil people – they just do what they do, it’s called unfettered Capitalism - our problem as Irish citizens is that our Government have allowed a situation to develop whereby the vulture funds win and the Irish tax payer loses. And our present Neo Liberal Government think that this is all fine. I believe otherwise. Here’s my Leader’s Questions with Taoiseach Enda Kenny this week, who knows that all is not well. - read full story / add a comment

Apple must be forced to repay taxes lost through dodgy deals with government, say tax campaigners

Tax justice campaigns group Debt & Development Coalition Ireland (DDCI) today welcomed the fact-finding mission to Ireland of the European Parliament Special Tax Committee on Thursday 28th May.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/taxe/home.html read full story / add a comment

The EU's negotiating team for pharmaceuticals, medical devices and cosmetics in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) met with civil society organisations inside the Commission on Wednesday (27 May) to defend the inclusion of the health sector in the trade deal.

In Europe, universal healthcare is a source of national pride, as well as a constant subject of debate. So, the inclusion of a healthcare chapter in TTIP has triggered heated reactions from health NGOs and trade unions, who are wary of an American-style liberalisation of a heavily regulated sector. read full story / add a comment

The United Nations, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and finance ministries are meeting in New York to finalize an agreement for the Financing for Development Conference (FfD) to be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in July. read full story / add a comment

The current focus on low pay and precarious work practices has set the scene for the work of the recently formed Low Pay Commission in the Republic of Ireland. One aspect of their work will be to look at the number of individuals trapped in low pay, many of whom are dependent on the social protection system to underpin their ability to make ends meet read full story / add a comment

The World Bank announces $650 million in new concessional loans and grants for Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia at the start of the Spring IMF and World Bank meetings. read full story / add a comment

The IMF issued a report today showing that debt and human crisis are driving inequality and financial instability. Jubilee USA Network calls for the establishment of structures to stabilize the global financial system and to protect low-income communities. The Ebola epidemic clearly demonstrates the need for these structures. read full story / add a comment

Grenada Could Influence Global Debt Negotiations read full story / add a comment