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Roundup-Young unemployed need hope

Friday, March 01 08:22:16

Young Europeans will be guaranteed the offer of a job, training or education under a new commitment agreed by EU ministers yesterday.

The EU-wide youth guarantee, which was brokered by Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton, will see a new job, further education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship offered to people aged under 25 who find themselves unemployed for four months upon leaving school or being made redundant.

Earlier yesterday, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said the guarantee was necessary to restore confidence and hope among young people.

"We need to give these young people a better prospect," he told the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (Ibec) CEO conference in Dublin.

While employment figures published by the Central Statistics Office yesterday show growth in the number of people employed for the first time in five years in the final quarter of 2012, Ireland still has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Europe at 30 per cent. "Here in Ireland, and all around Europe, too many young people are asking if they will ever find a job or have the same quality of life as their parents," he said.

He said young people should be trained to fill vacancies in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector: "The sad fact is that we simultaneously have high levels of unemployment and skill shortages. The shortfall in ICT professionals could reach 700,000 by 2015. Opportunities exist and we must train our young people to fill them."

Smurfit Kappa chief executive Gary McCann said Europe must open its borders to young talent to fill these roles. "If we want to grow jobs in Europe, we need the skills to fill them."

Some E6 billion in the EU budget has been set aside to tackle youth unemployment in areas with unemployment rates of 25 per cent or higher. The Irish Times

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One of Europe's biggest internet porn producers moved key parts of its business to the Republic last year. Luxembourg-based Manwin, which operates some of the world's most heavily viewed porn sites, set up a number of subsidiaries in Dublin in 2012.

The move came before it bought part of the business of a rival, US-based RK Netmedia, a deal that had to get the Irish Competition Authority's approval before it went through in the autumn.

Manwin's purchase of RK's assets resulted in a number of transactions involving two of the Republic's best-known commercial law firms, Arthur Cox and AL Goodbody.

Company documents show that following the deal in the autumn, Miami-beach based RK Holdings gave a Dublin company, Manwin Content RK, the right to use thousands of its porn movies.

Arthur Cox advised RK Holdings while AL Goodbody acted for Manwin Content RK. The Dublin company had to give security over some of its assets in return for using the US producer's copyright.

Neither firm would comment, but it is understood that they were asked by overseas lawyers to act on the Irish elements of the deal. The Irish Times

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ULSTER Bank, reeling from a E1.2bn loss, has ditched a scheme that would have seen the bank regulated by authorities in the UK instead of here. It ends speculation the Central Bank could lose oversight of the county's third largest bank.

A strategic review by the bank did look at merging Ulster Bank's operation in the Republic and in the North into a single entity.

That entity could have been regulated by the UK's financial services authority, Ulster Bank chief executive Jim Brown told the Irish Independent.

However, it is not going to happen after a decision was taken to keep the bank's current structure intact, he said. The Irish Independent

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UP to 13,500 Bank of Ireland and Bristol & West mortgage customers in the UK will see their monthly mortgage costs as much as triple after the terms of their base-rate tracker deals were changed. - The Irish bank said a "special condition" clause contained in loan agreements allowed it to increase the interest rate differential on some of its UK base-rate tracker mortgages. Experts said there was no special condition in Irish tracker mortgage accounts.

CENTRAL Bank support for the Irish covered banks fell further in January and now stands at its lowest level since the end of the original blanket bank guarantee in September 2010. The Irish Independent