A round-up of today's other stories in brief...
Students protest over bailout deal in sub-zero temperatures
Students staged a protest in sub-zero temperatures outside Anglo Irish Bank in Galway yesterday over the deal agreed by the Government with the IMF and the ECB, writes Lorna Siggins.
The group from the Galway branch of the Free Education for Everyone group also attempted to occupy Anglo’s premises, but were prevented by private security. Gardaí monitoring the demonstration said the event was peaceful. Galway group spokesman Joe Loughnane said the protest was being held in solidarity with workers and in opposition to the bank bailouts.
Anglo ‘should have been shut sooner’
Tens of billions of euro would have been saved if Anglo Irish Bank had been wound down two years ago, Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar said. Responding to Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan’s comments about the bank, Mr Varadkar said: “Fine Gael advocated the orderly wind-down of Anglo in 2008 and it is a tragedy for Irish taxpayers that this is only now happening.”
Labour’s finance spokeswoman Joan Burton described Anglo as the rotten apple in the banking system.
North’s civil service pensions in the red
The North’s civil service pension scheme is more than £50 million (€59 million) in the red, the Department of Finance has said.
SDLP Assembly member Thomas Burns was given the information in response to an Assembly question. The final salary scheme has seen its deficit widen since 2001. Some 26,000 civil servants are included in pension schemes, but the main scheme has seen its costs rise due to the increase in the size of the civil service and the survival rates of retirees.