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 Thurles Credit Union Local schools have been invited to participate in the first stage of the nationwide 2010 Credit Union School’s Quiz competition, being run by Thurles Credit Union in the Thurles Sarsfield’s GAA Club Centre on Friday 29th January 2010 at 7.30pm.
Over 25,000 schoolchildren under the age of 13 will compete in over 300 venues throughout the 32 counties of Ireland. The questions, compiled by primary school teachers, will cover such general topics as geography, history, music, literature and sport.
This is the 19th successive year that the Schools Quiz has been organised by the Irish League of Credit Unions. It consists of two ‘knock-out’ stages, which will culminate in a National Final in Dublin in early April, when 100 qualifying teams will compete.
In addition to salvers, certificates and prizes to the winning teams’ members, the winning schools will also receive a welcome cash prize.
Further information is available from Thurles Credit Union (Telephone 0504 91700)
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.
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