Today in the press

EU SET TO GIVE IRELAND UNTIL 2014 TO MEET ITS BUDGET DEFICIT TARGET - The European Commission is preparing to extend by one year the Government's deadline to restore stability to the public finances, a move that raises the prospect of swingeing cutbacks and taxation measures continuing into the middle of the next decade, reports the Irish Times. Although trade union leaders have called on the Government to ease spending cutbacks by extending the duration of its recovery programme beyond the current target of 2013, the commission will not give the Government any additional headroom as it seeks to impose €4 billion in cutbacks in the budget next month. EU sources say economic and monetary affairs commissioner Joaquín Almunia will declare tomorrow that Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan is taking "effective action" to address the crisis in the public finances. But the commissioner will also say that the deterioration in the State's economic performance since the start of the year - due to weakening tax receipts and higher social welfare spending - is such that the Government should now be given until 2014 to reduce the budget deficit to a sustainable level.

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1,000 A MONTH SEEK HELP TO PAY MORTGAGE - More than 1,000 people a month are turning to the Government for help to pay their mortgages. But as many as half of them are being turned down. The dramatic rise in the numbers who cannot afford to meet their monthly mortgage repayments has underlined the scale of the crisis affecting a growing number of desperate homeowners. The mortgage interest relief supplement is designed to cover the interest portion of the home loan. Those seeking aid have to show they negotiated to reschedule the mortgage payments with their lender. They also have to be means tested. And both husband and wife must be out of work. The increase in applications comes at a time when mortgage interest rates are at record lows. Expected rises in the next year are likely to push substantially more people to the financial brink. Figures obtained by the Irish Independent reveal that the Government expects to have to spend €60m this year helping homeowners to pay their mortgages. This is double the amount spent on the mortgage interest supplement scheme last year.

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BUSH OFFICIALS LEAD IRAQ BUSINESS PUSH - Senior Bush administration figures including Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to Baghdad, and Jay Garner, the retired general who led reconstruction efforts immediately after the war, are leading a new business push into Iraq, says the Financial Times. The two one-time senior officials are among a raft of former US soldiers and diplomats either leveraging their war experience helping foreign companies to enter the Iraqi market or starting businesses there themselves. Mr Khalilzad's Khalilzad Associates this year set up offices in Baghdad and the northern Kurdish city of Erbil from which it is advising companies wanting to do business in Iraq. The company declined requests for interviews but a spokesperson confirmed the establishment of its offices and that Mr Khalilzad, also former US ambassador to the UN, had made several trips to the country this year. Mr Garner, the de-facto US governor of Iraq after the war, sat on the board of Vast Exploration when it bought 37% of a Kurdistan oil block two years ago and remains an adviser to the Canadian company. "Jay is very well known in Kurdistan and Iraq and it was useful to the company," said a spokesman for Vast.

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KEY OIL FIGURES WERE DISTORTED BY US PRESSURE, SAYS WHISTLEBLOWER - The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying, says the Guardian. The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves. The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow - which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies. In particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83 millio barrels a day to 105 million barrels. External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and say the world has already passed its peak in oil production.