Search Results for: Ireland

BY ROBERT STOKES, IN EDINBURGH

INVESTORS want to make the United Kingdom the hot spot for new gas storage projects in the European Union (EU). The UK tops the EU’s league table of projects either applied for or with official consent: 11.1 billion cubic metres (bcm) of space compared with 4.6bcm of current operational capacity.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission is coming under pressure to toughen its action against high mobile roaming charges, as its latest proposals are debated at the European Parliament.

MEPs want the Commission to go further in its action to foist more competition on the roaming market while capping bills.…

BY PETER DA COSTA and KEITH NUTHALL

IRELAND’s Electric Supply Board (ESB) has secured a Euro EUR235 million loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to improve the performance of national energy networks. Signed on November 17, the agreement is designed to enable Irish power lines to better transmit coastal wind energy to populated areas, to introduce smart metering and develop re-charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.…

BY ROBERT STOKES

NATIONALISM and the energy industry have made uneasy bedfellows throughout history, yet Scotland is attracting substantial international investment in renewables despite having, since May and for the first time, a majority government committed to winning independence from the UK.…

BY LEAH GERMAIN

SIERRA Leone has had a tough time in the past 20 years, with a savage civil war bringing misery and dislocation, but since 2002 peace has largely held and the economy has started to develop – a good example being the recent improvements to the Freetown-Lungi International Airport (FNA).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched a Euro EUR1.5 million study into concerns that European Union (EU) animal welfare and food safety rules could harm the global competitiveness of EU meat and other livestock sectors.

Brussels has asked research teams to bid for a major study comparing compliance costs for EU and non-EU country meat producers.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON

RECYCLING products as large as motor vehicles; or encouraging public authorities to buy environment-friendly autos seem such good ideas, laws insisting this happens is surely just commonsense? Not so in Europe, it would appear, where a string of countries are in trouble for not implementing the European Union’s recent (EU) green procurement directive; and one – Italy – is facing potential legal action for flouting the EU’s end-of-life vehicles (ELV) directive, even though these was approved in the year 2000.…

BY MARK GODFREY

SOFT loans from a cash-rich bevvy of state banks; direct payments to help build manufacturing bases; and tax breaks for firms using local components – these are all forms of state support currently helping China’s wind turbine and solar panel makers capture global market share.…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS

INFORMATION technology innovations and especially the Internet have certainly changed the anti-money laundering and compliance officials share, store and access information, but as high-tech solutions become more streamlined and interconnected, one concern that still arises is security. Such concerns are increasingly being voiced as regards cloud computing, whose bulk remote digital muscle is regarded as attractive by financial institutions in boosting their work against money laundering and terrorist financing.…

BY NEIL CALLANAN

THE CHOICE of The Shelbourne Hotel on Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green for Ireland’s first major post-recession property auction could not have been better. The grand dame of Irish hotels in many ways serves as a microcosm of the boom and the bust of the Irish property market over the last decade.…