IBEC CALLS FOR ACTION ON DEFINED BENEFIT PENSION SCHEMES - Employers' group IBEC is calling for a fairer distribution of funds from defined benefit pension schemes if and when they are wound up. Under current rules retired members are paid in full from the available funds before other members are considered.
IBEC director Brendan McGinty says that a fundamental shift in policy is needed in order to avoid leaving workers facing radically reduced benefits. He says that under current regulations, payments to pensioners are protected but if you are under pension age, you run the risk of getting very little if the scheme is wound up.
On Ulster Bank, Mr McGinty says that it has been a difficult week for the bank and its customers, who are also facing into another difficult week as the bank seeks to correct its IT failure. He says alternative arrangements for businesses are being made including temporary loans and the bank has provided assurances that it will ensure that a company's credit rating will not be impacted.
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MORNING BRIEFS - Dawn Meats today opens a processing facility at Carroll's Cross in Waterford that will handle 18,000 tonnes of beef per year for McDonald's. Dawn Meats recently signed a five year €300m deal to supply beef to McDonald's which last year purchased €110m euro worth of Irish meat for export.
*** Danone is investing €20m to expand its Wexford plant producing baby and infant formula under the Aptamil and Cow & Gate brands. That investment is supported by the state through Enterprise Ireland and Danone says it will result in 45 new jobs.
*** After falling by 7% in the past week crude oil prices edged higher this morning. Tropical storm Debby has caused about a quarter of US oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico to be shut down temporarily as a precaution. That region accounts for a fifth of all US oil production and 6% of the world's natural gas production.
*** Ahead of Thursday's EU council meeting, Germany's Der Spiegel magazine cites an unpublished report from the German finance ministry as suggesting that a euro break-up cut would knock as much as 10% from German economic output and see unemployment in that country rise from 3 million to 5 million. In its cover story this week entitled "Euro break-up a scenario" Der Spiegel quotes an unnamed German finance official as saying that saving the euro is the lesser and certainly less costly of two evils.
