and then by another 9 billion euros
Officials from the EU were in Dublin this week to review the nation’s deteriorating finances as the government, led by Prime Minister Brian Cowen since May 2008, prepares to push its latest package of spending cuts through parliament in December. air jordan 2010 air jordan 23 EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said Nov. 8 that the country hadn’t asked for a bailout and he expected it to beat the crisis. The IMF also hasn’t received any request for financial help from Ireland and it is following the situation “very closely,” Carlo Cottarelli, director of the fund’s fiscal department, said on Nov. 5. air jordan 23 air jordan 19 ‘Sovereign Country’ “We are a sovereign country and we would hope that our political leaders and masters would have been able to get us out of this mess,” said James Geoghegan, 28, a nurse at University College Hospital in Galway who reckons his monthly paycheck has been reduced by “a couple of hundred” euros. air jordan 6 air jordan 13 Beginning in 2008, Ireland cut public-sector pay by about 14 percent, lowered welfare payments for the unemployed and parents, and raised taxes. The approach initially won praise from investors before signs emerged that the country’s financial-services industry may bankrupt the nation. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said in September that the final cost of rescuing the banking system may be close to 33 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Ireland now is preparing to cut its budget by 6 billion euros in 2011 and then by another 9 billion euros over the next three years, to narrow the deficit to 3 percent of GDP from 12 percent this year. The figure is 32 percent when bank rescue costs are included. Ireland has made 14.5 billion euros of cost savings since 2008, Cowen said Oct. 27. air jordan 3 coach handbags ‘Devil You Know’ Declan O’Hara, a 49-year-old taxi driver in the Irish capital, wants to stick with a domestic solution. “It may be better the devil you know than the one you don’t,” O’Hara said. “Going to the IMF would be unknown territory. Times are already very tough. They might say hand over all your possessions. At least now, we call the shots.” O’Hara was driving down Dublin’s south quays, the site of dozens of derelict and empty buildings, a legacy of the real- estate bonanza, which abruptly ended in 2008. About 36,000 Irish mortgage holders are in arrears and the country has about 2,800 so-called ghost estates, according to government statistics. air jordan 1 flight air jordan 1