Search Results for: Irish

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE IRISH government is being formally threatened with legal action at the European Court of Justice over refusing to scrap its excise stamp system, where tobacco manufacturers pay duty by ‘buying’ stamps from tax authorities. The European Commission says this illegally prevents traders moving Irish-stamped tobacco around the European Union, where different excise rates may apply.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH the summer holiday season in full swing, hold those calls to Stockholm: the Swedes have more time off than other Europeans, Germany’s IW economic institute has claimed. In an international survey of holidays taken by workers in 2003 in 14 western European countries, the Cologne-based think tank said Sweden was closely followed by the Netherlands (31 days) and Denmark (30 days).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE IRISH government is being threatened with the levying of large daily recurring fines from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) if it continues to ignore a ruling telling it to cease overgrazing by sheep in protected bog areas.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SEEN in the context of the past decade, the entry of 10 new member states to the European Union (EU) which took place on May 1 has proved nothing like the disaster for the nuclear industry that was once feared.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Green Party has kicked off its June 10 European election campaign, which will focus on food safety and preventing repeats of the BSE and salmonella scares that have damaged the European Union (EU) meat industry in recent years.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THEY’RE not to everybody’s taste, we quite agree, but there’s no doubt that flavoured cigars have a very devoted band of followers and can no longer be dismissed as a passing fancy. Indeed after speaking to a number of the big players it is easy to gain the impression that the flavoured, (or aromatic), segment has (along perhaps with filters) been the only one to buck the cigar sector’s trend of falling or stagnant sales in recent years.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SCOTTISH MEP has raised concerns at the European Parliament about reports of the Dundrennan firing range, in Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland, being used by the British military to test depleted uranium weapons. Green MEP Neil MacCormick alleged the firing may have dumped 29 tonnes of depleted uranium off south-west Scotland, a concern to both British and Irish citizens, and, he claimed, a likely breach of the UN Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution.…

BY EDWARD PETERS
DEPENDING on who you ask, Taiwan is either a renegade province or to all intents and purposes an independent nation, albeit one that currently lacks full international recognition. To suggest that it could be a fully functioning country in its own right to anyone in Beijing – the capital of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – is tantamount to treason.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has sent Ireland a legal final warning threatening possible legal action over Dublin’s alleged failure to protect too few maritime zones containing commercial shellfish fisheries. Brussels says that the Irish government has broken the EU shellfish water directive by designating only 14 shellfish zones for special protection.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
HOSPITAL consultants began industrial action across the Irish Republic yesterday as part of an escalating protest against the imposition of a new state scheme for insuring medical malpractice. Senior doctors have withdrawn all administrative duties and will stop all other duties, except emergency work, if the dispute over the so-called ‘enterprise liability’ cover is not resolved within three weeks.…