Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Businessman 'driven to the brink' by the banks dreamed of his own funeral

By Alison O'Riordan

Tuesday January 10 2012


A BUSINESSMAN has revealed how he was driven to the brink by callous banks.

George Mordaunt says that his whole life fell apart along with his once successful car dealership.

The father-of-two visualised his own funeral as he felt victimised by Irish banks.

"You get into this frenzy of scheming for survival and it takes over your life and everything else gets parked and it becomes a seven-day-a-week frenzy," he told the

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Monday, December 12, 2011

Farmers fighting to keep Christmas shoppers local

By ALISON O'RIORDAN

Sunday November 23 2008




The fight against the 'flight to Newry' has been launched by a countryside alliance as busloads of shoppers head for the border towns of Northern Ireland for the first recessionary Christmas spree in 20 years.

The Irish Farmers Association (IFA) has formed an umbrella group of local organisations to persuade shoppers to 'Go Local' and put saving their own towns ahead of landing cross-border savings.

But just as the campaign was

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Artists should not escape tax free

It's time to scrap the tax exemption for well-heeled artists and to dismantle Aosdana while we are at it, writes Liam Collins


Sunday September 27 2009




It's time to end the tax exemption for 'artists' and while he's at it, Brian Lenihan should dismantle that awful secret organisation set up by Charles Haughey called Aosdana.

Happily, I got the so-called exemption for two books that didn't deserve it -- but not for a third, that probably did but didn't meet the criteria.

The

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Monday, November 21, 2011

After-dinner talkers make a mint from clever chat

THE merchants of gloom are making a fortune out of the recession. We can’t get enough of their dire warnings of economic Armageddon.
Leading economic commentators who specialise in doom-laden prophesy, like
David McWilliams, Eddie Hobbs and George Lee, have become big box-office draws on the after-dinner speaking circuit.
As the season for black-tie events kicks off, the naysayers can now command up to €10,000 a gig. The recession has made George Lee, RTE’s economics
commentator who

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The humiliation of begging for a day on Dublin's mean streets

I was an amateur beggar for a day on the mean streets of Dublin and in a couple of hours I managed to pull in €20 by preying on people's generosity.

By being the face of social decline and demise for those few hours I made a few quid, yet I didn't twitch a muscle.

If one can put up with some humiliation and cast your dignity aside there is money to be made out there from people's spare change just by looking like an eyesore on the streets. That's all it takes for a career in the making

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Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Dunne and bankers in Africa doing hard labour

He's Ireland's most talked about developer, but Sean Dunne, the man dubbed 'The Baron of Ballsbridge' is not afraid to get his hands dirty and mix a bit of cement.

Along with up to 50 senior Irish bankers, Mr Dunne has joined millionaire developer Niall Mellon on his annual one-week volunteer trip to South Africa -- to build houses for the township poor.

With the future of Irish banking in a state of flux, and the property market at a standstill, Cape Town seems like the ideal

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Bankers find their Cape of Good Hope

Fifty Irish bankers and some of Ireland's best known property developers, including Sean Dunne, fled Ireland this weekend to join multimillionaire developer Niall Mellon on his annual one-week volunteer trip in South Africa.

Although the future of Irish banking is in a state of flux, with mergers and possible collapse still on the cards, many senior bankers are getting down and dirty building houses in the townships while disaster still looms at home.

Heads of lending divisions, and a

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