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The Gleeson Group , Borrisoleigh, Co.Tipperary, has agreed a €26m refinancing deal with its banks with a view to spending up to €25m on new acquisitions which may come about because of the economic downturn.
 Tipperary Spring Water Owned by the Cooney family since the 1970s, the Gleeson Group was initially a Guinness bottler but now distributes everything from soft drinks to beers and ciders.
Gleeson Group is Ireland’s leading supplier and distributor of beverage products in Ireland.
With 11 fully owned distribution hubs, the company have full national coverage and can deliver to every shop, restaurant, catering company, distributor, supermarket, public house, forecourt and hotel in Ireland, both North and South.
Established by the Gleeson family in the late 1960’s in Borrisoleigh, County Tipperary, Gleeson was a manufacturer of soft drinks and a bottler of the Guinness stout brand.
The soft drinks giant, best known, nation-wide, for its product ‘Tipperary Water’ operates a drinks and distribution business and currently enjoys a turnover of almost €250m.
In February M & J Gleeson (Investments) secured a new €26m facility from AIB, Barclays and Bank of Scotland (Ireland), which included the refinancing of a €12m loan originally taken out in 2007.
The Company has already bought out an Offaly distributor in recent weeks and seems confident that there will be further opportunities over the coming year.
Public demand soared for its Tipperary Water product, amid shortages of tap water brought about by recent flooding and frozen arctic conditions.
The Company currently employs a team of approximately 686 employees and despite some trading difficulties due to the economic downturn, declared no redundancies in 2009. This was partly due to good forward planning and timely action on product cost, which included a pay freeze accepted right across the total workforce.
Former chief executive of CRH (International Building Materials Group) Tipperary born Mr Liam O’Mahony has been appointed as the new Chairman of IDA Ireland. Mr O’Mahony takes over the position of chairman from Mr John Dunne.
Born in 1946, the 63 year old Mr O’Mahony (BE, BL, MBA, FIEI) was born in Tipperary and educated at De La Salle College in Waterford, University College Cork, Trinity College D ublin and the Kings Inns, joining CRH in 1971. He has held various senior management positions including Managing Director, Republic of Ireland and UK Group companies and Chief Executive of American operations.
He joined the CRH Board in 1992 and became Group Chief Executive in January 2000, a position he held until the end of 2008.
In 2004, he was Ireland’s best paid chief executive, earning a €3.5m package, made up of basic remuneration €2m with a once off bonus of €1.5 related to the company’s performance over the past five years.
Liam O’Mahony was recognised for excellence when he was awarded the Business and Finance Business Person of the year in 2005.
He is Chairman of Smurfit Kappa Group plc, a director of Project Management Limited and a member of The Irish Management Institute Council.
Established in its current form in 1994, IDA Ireland is the government agency responsible for the establishment and development in the State of industrial undertakings from outside the State. IDA works in partnerships with other organisations to enhance the best of Irish capabilities and talents and match them to the best of global investment.
It is expected that Mr O’Mahony experience and knowledge will contribute greatly to the further development and enhancement of foreign direct investment in Ireland.
 Tipperary For Sale Per figures recently published by the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) based in NUI Maynooth since 2001, there are now no less than 33 “Ghost Housing Estates” vacant in Co.Tipperary. (17 in South Tipp – 16 in North Tipp)
During the period 2006-09, it appears that we have, as a nation, only now woken up to the fact that housing stock became completely devoid from any kind of realistic sensible projected planning and demand. This apparent oversight has now been further aggravated by a diminished market and an ever changing human population profile.
There were 217,101 housing units built in Ireland between April 2006 – Dec 2009. Based on 1996-2006 population growth there was a need for only about 85,446 units countrywide and we now have a potential oversupply of 131,665 units for which the lower paid working members of our Green Island are being asked indirectly to subsidise without ever getting our names on a Title Deed.
So How Did This Housing Surplus Happen?
A census here in Ireland takes place, usually, in every year that ends in a 1 or a 6 except when some national crisis rears its ugly head e.g. Famine, War or Foot and Mouth disease. ‘Census 2006′ took place on the night of Sunday, April 23, 2006. The preliminary results of the 2006 Census were published on 19 July 2006, that is three months following the actual Census Day.
The publication schedule for the Census 2006 reports can be downloaded here.
From these figures the Irish Government knew the population growth and household size for the period 1996-2006 from this 2006 Census and so they knew the number of household units that would have been required for the period 2006-09, if population growth followed this 06-09 trend.
Given this present government knew the number of house units built between April 2006 (date of the census) and 2009, for each county, they could therefore have calculated accurately the projected oversupply of units per county, based on these projected household growth and population figures.
If this data had been examined the following information would surely have been gleaned regarding Co.Tipperary.
Household growth 1996-2006 -5640.
Houses required 2006-2009 based on 1996-2006 growth figures – 2256.
Because of this apparent failure to examine this known collected data, by developers, bankers etc, we now find ourselves in the following position as we go forward.
Houses built in Tipperary County 2006- 2009 – 7211.
Over supply of Building Units -4955.
This situation now leaves Co.Tipperary with a percentage of housing over supplied, amounting to 439.6% and a problem which will haunt us for the next 10 years at least.
This is what happens when no one is ‘minding the shop’ and when greed and looting within our society is routine and allowed to go unrestrained by those we elect, entrust and enhance with large salaries and bonuses, to manage our affairs.
Have you been refused finance by your bank?
 John Gormley TD and leader of The Green Party John Gormley showed signs of real leadership today by announcing limits on spending by local councillors.
Under the new regime city and county councillors will be limited to €4,700 per year; borough councillors €3,000; councillors from larger towns €2,000; and councillors from smaller towns to €1,000.
The new limits will not apply to councils which spent less than these amounts last year. In those cases the actual amount spent in 2009 will apply as the limit.
The limits are aimed at achieving better value for money and tackling spending in excess of €13,000 per councillor per year in some cases. They follow on a 25% cut in travel and subsistence allowances applied to councillors earlier this year.
Some councillors were guilty of widespread abuse of the expenses system by signing into conferences and then quickly departing the event in pursuit of personal business.
Announcing the measure Mr. Gormley said the new limits were not spending targets for councillors. He stressed that most councillors behaved responsibly when spending taxpayers’ money but there were concerns about a minority.
“I expect all councillors to uphold the highest standards of behaviour when it comes to paying taxpayers’ money.”
The new limits will be made by ministerial regulation and follow consultation with councillors’ representatives. Mr Gormley met local representatives last September and received a written submission in November.
Good one John, we now wait with bated breath to see if you have the necessary leadership qualities to implement this necessary change.
According to the latest official figures and on a County level, North Tipperary is 7.5 per cent below the national average with regard to disposable incomes, per capita for 2007.
The figures show that the North of the County is faring worse than the South. In North Tipperary the average is €20,589 per person while in south Tipp the average disposable income is slightly better at €21,148.
According to latest figures from the Central Statistics Office the national average for 2007 is €21,694.
Chief executive of Irish Rural Link (IRL) which is the national network campaigning for sustainable rural communities, Mr Séamus Boland, said that the figures showed spending on rural infrastructure and local services should now not be cut. He further stated that this official bulletin highlighted the need for investment in infrastructure and training.
 Welfare People in Dublin fared best with just over €24 thousand disposable incomes while Donegal had the lowest at just over €18 thousand
This report comes as the recent Child Benefits cuts announced in the budget come into force this month.
Fine Gaels Deputy Noel Coonan said a loss of €16 per month may not mean much to Government Ministers but is a vital lifeline for countless North Tipperary families suffering Child Benefit cutbacks from the beginning of this month.
Deputy Coonan said:
“Families have already seen the loss of the entire Early Childcare Supplement and now more cuts are hitting their pockets from last week in the form of Child Benefit cutbacks. Meanwhile, this Government ensures senior management public sector workers escape the full brunt of pay cuts introduced in December’s budget. Cleaners in Government offices face a larger pay cut than senior civil servants. It is crystal clear this Government is shielding top civil servants while ordinary folk and lower paid public servants suffer. Fine Gael fought tooth and nail against cuts in Child Benefit. This is a vital payment for families and it should not have been targeted. The Government is putting bankers and developers ahead of children. Fine Gael has repeatedly said there are much better ways of making savings across the public finances, and the best way of getting the social welfare budget down was to get people back to work. Yet the Budget did nothing to stimulate job creation and get people off the dole queue. It failed to help unemployed people and Fianna Fail failed to implement our constructive proposals.
The tax take for 2009 was some €10 billion less than projected at the time of the Budget in 2008, and €1.4 billion less than at last April’s Emergency Budget. These figures unfortunately do not indicate a positive turning point in our economy, despite Government assurances that we are turning a corner.
“Fine Gael is committed to this task of transforming public service delivery, which must include, converting public infrastructures into competitive, state-of-the-art networks, fixing a broken political and regulatory model, sweating sectored opportunities that are open to Ireland, getting banks to start lending again to consumers and businesses.” continued Deputy Coonan.
The Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment has made ‘poor progression’ in handing out lump sum payments owed to employees, according to Deputy Noel Coonan. In September, the redundancy section was processing claims for June 2009. Today the department is still handling claims for the same month.
 Deputy Noel Coonan “Two months on and the Department is still stuck dealing with claims received in June. I accept there has been an exceptional increase in applications lodged over 2009 but with the Government predicting an extra 750,000 people on the dole next year, the Department should be trying harder than ever to significantly reduce waiting times in preparation for this. People are relying greatly on these payments for financial security and they are entitled to be promptly paid their entitlements,” said the Fine Gael TD.
“The recent Budget did not provide a comprehensive strategy to get people back to work. We do not want to be complaining about the queue of over 42,000 people waiting grimly on their redundancy payments. We want to be able to say that people have faced the worst and our economy is recovering but this Government continues to lead us down a bleak path.
Figures released to me through a parliamentary question show the redundancy section is currently processing rebate applications submitted by post from March 2009 and those filed online from April 2009. This means the waiting time is approximately eight to nine months. The Government is not providing an efficient system at a time when recession is biting and people are in desperate need of what is owed to them,” continued Deputy Coonan.
Since January last, the department have processed 45,201 claims. However, there are 42,591 claims still waiting to be processed.
Deputy Coonan has submitted parliamentary questions to Tanáiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan T.D., asking her to outline the number of people in North Tipperary waiting on redundancy payments but the Minister was unable to provide such figures.
The number of incoming redundancy claims is up 96% on the same period last year.
Nationally, at least twenty six thousand mortgages are in arrears, according to figures published by the Financial Regulator, today .
These figures show almost 3.3 per cent of all residential mortgages, are in arrears for 90 days or longer up to the end of September of this year.
There are 26,271 mortgages in arrears with 17,767 homeowners behind in payments for more than 6 months. The figure is up from June of 2008, when almost 14,000 mortgages, equal to 1.4 per cent of all mortgages, were more than three months in arrears.
These figures released by the Financial Regulator also shows a rise in repossessions with court orders granted in some 79 cases.
Tipperary residents have welcomed the news that mortgage interest relief has been extended for a further seven years. This move will bring some relief to people who bought their homes at the peak of the market and now find themselves in negative equity.
The relief was due to expire in 2010 but as a support to homeowners in negative equity, the recent Budget extended the entitlement to mortgage interest relief until the end of 2017. There has been a lot of justified negativity surrounding the recent Budget and this extension provides at least some assistance to struggling homeowners.
The Budget provides that qualifying loans taken out before 1 July 2011 will continue to get relief at current levels for seven years. Transitional arrangements will apply to loans taken out in the subsequent 18 months at a reduced level and duration.
April’s supplementary Budget announced that from May 2009 mortgage interest relief would be discounted for any mortgage over seven years. Therefore tax relief was only available on the interest payments for the first seven years of your mortgage but unavailable for the eighth and subsequent years. However this relief has now been pushed forward to help alleviate some of the pressure on homeowners.
This is especially good news for younger people who have just stepped onto the property ladder and have found themselves unemployed and with a huge mortgage.
However, it is small compensation for the mistakes made by this Government’s over-reliance on the property market.
Full details of the deadline extension will be outlined in the Finance Bill.
Thurles Chamber’s annual Christmas Dinner was well attended on Thursday night last, by the majority of business leaders in the town together with staff.
One of this years Special Guest Speakers was Mr Mark Fielding CEO of Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association Ltd (ISME) the Independent Business Organisation.
Speaking to those in attendance Mr Fielding stated:
Madam President Anne Strappe, Honoured Guests, Chamber Members, Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends, I stand before you this evening with mixed emotions.
As a Thurles man I am humbled and proud to be asked to speak at the 2009 Thurles Chamber of Commerce Annual Christmas Dinner.
 Mr Mark Fielding CEO ISME I am proud, as the CEO of ISME. that I represent the hopes and aspirations, the successes and failures, the hard working community that account for almost 99% of all businesses in Ireland. I represent YOU, the owner/managers of SMALL and MEDIUM BUSINESS throughout this country. I am humble because I return to the place of my birth.
I was born in Suirside; the town that educated me, from Mother Dolores’ classroom in the Ursuline laundry in Suirside, where as a two and three year old I sat with my classmates from the itinerant community, through the primary schools of the Ursulines and Scoil Ailbe and the secondary school of the Christian Brothers. The altar boys, the boy scouts, the street leagues, Thurles Sarsfields, Thurles Rugby club. Where I served my time in JJ Fielding Ltd. as a messenger boy, store boy, van boy and dog walker. As a bar hop in Tom Brereton’s, as a helper in Jackie Griffins as a footer on Tom Ryan’s bog and as an articled clerk in Chambers Fewer and Halley.
Thurles is where I first experienced the sweet taste of success where I set up my very first business and where I first felt the gloom of business failure and where I learned my first business lessons; when you see an opportunity grab it; never flaunt your success and always secure your supply chain. It was Christmas time and I had been selling penny candles to my friends and classmates in Mother Dolores’ class (actually they were getting a bargain at 2 for a penny) and spending my profits in Mrs Condon’s shop on ice cream and bubble gum and sharing my largess with all the other children on the Square. However it was on my third visit to the suppliers that my world came crashing down in Enron proportions, when Christy Deegan, the sacristan collared me with a jumper full of candles on the steps of the Cathedral. Word had got out and my first venture ended, but not before the window of every tinkers caravan was aglow with holy Christmas candles. It was 1954 and I was 4 years old.
Continue reading Thurles Born Mark Fielding ISME Speaks At Chamber Dinner
Last Wednesday’s Budget should have been strongly centred on job creation and sustainability but instead failed miserably to help unemployed people or employees holding onto a job by their fingernails, according to Deputy Noel Coonan. The Fine Gael TD also said this Government has effectively cancelled Christmas for a majority of the people of North Tipperary.
Deputy Noel Coonan Deputy Noel Coonan stated:
“As a result of the Budget, we have people living on less than €100 a week. We have 315,000 public servants nationwide taking a pay cut. We have extremely irate parents suffering 4% cuts in Social Welfare. We are going to have riots on the streets and heavy industrial action. We are facing one of the worse winters in the history of the state.
The Government has pick-pocketed the most poor and sick with prescription charges for medical card holders, an increase in the drugs payment threshold and a mere €10million for home care packages. The €221million cut to child benefit will rob families of €16 per child per month and will not help get this country back to work.
The farming community has sadly been attacked once again with a 13% cut in the Department’s Budget. To ease some of the pain for this vital sector, Fine Gael called for the Government to exempt farm diesel from the carbon tax but in return they slapped 4cent on every litre. Another sector that is struggling badly are thousands of home owners who are in negative equity and under huge worry and stress. This Government has provided no real help for these people.
Who would have ever thought Fianna Fáil would stoop so low to take money off blind people and widows by reducing their pension? Meanwhile, they failed to bring those on highest incomes further into the tax net. Where is the fairness and equality in that?”
The Fine Gael Deputy went on to said that not even the lowest of the low paid will escape a wage cut. Part-time public sector workers not in the tax net and earning less than €18,500 will face a 5% drop in take-home pay, almost twice as much as a Minister for State.
Continue reading The Low Paid Shoulder The Burdens Of The December Budget
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