China’s new European trade hub: An Irish town of 18,000 – Christian Science Monitor
January 7th, 2012
Central Dublin, December 2011 (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
ATHLONE, IRELAND – As China’s government readies to buy up European infrastructure, a trade hub slated for the Irish midlands could prove a showcase for the world’s second-largest economy in a struggling continent and provide much needed jobs in debt-addled Ireland.
In December, local authorities gave the go-ahead to a trade hub that would give Chinese business an anchor in Europe. Backers say the 1.4 billion euro ($1.8 billion) project “will become the largest European source of Chinese-branded goods in Europe.” With the World Bank’s growth forecast for China reduced, partly because of the reduction in European demand for Chinese goods, a revived Europe is in China’s interest. (more…)
Irish Continue to Struggle Over Abuse Fallout as Nuncio Takes Up Post – National Catholic Register
January 7th, 2012
DUBLIN — As Archbishop Charles Brown takes up his new post of papal nuncio to Ireland, he will face what some see as unprecedented difficulties for the Church in Ireland.
After the publication of a series of reports outlining gruesome cases of sexual abuse by priests in Ireland over recent decades, coupled with a falloff in Church attendance, and less quantifiably, a perceptible decline in religious belief and practice, it’s little wonder that Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin predicted that his archdiocese faced its toughest challenge “since Catholic Emancipation,” the 1829 changes to British law that removed many of the discriminatory provisions against Catholics in the United Kingdom, of which Ireland was then a part.
Archbishop Martin was commenting on a drop in Mass attendance in Dublin to 14% and declining priest numbers, but the remarks were seen by many as appropriate to the wider Church in Ireland, which now operates within what Irish writer John Waters described to the Register as “the most anti-Catholic country in Europe.” (more…)
Ireland pushes education ties with Vietnam in bid to court student market – Irish Independent
November 28th, 2011
Ireland's Minister of State for Trade and Development Jan O'Sullivan and Vietnam's Minister of Education and Training Pham Vu Luan sign education MOU in Hanoi on Monday (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Simon Roughneen in Hanoi – Ireland and Vietnam today launched a deal aimed at increasing the number of Vietnamese students taking third-level courses in Ireland.
Speaking in the Vietnamese capital on Monday morning, Minister of State for Trade And Development Jan O’Sullivan said that “Ireland sees our education linkages as central to the future of bilateral economic relations with Vietnam.”
Currently 40 Vietnamese are enrolled in Ireland’s universities, mostly funded by Irish Government scholarships. To compare, 6000 Vietnamese are studying in the UK, and elsewhere, tapping the Asian student market has created a multi-billion dollar industry within Australia’s third-level education system. Last year 25,000 Vietnamese were part of a total of 240,000 Asian students who enrolled in Australia, up from 180,000 in 2008. (more…)
Leaked cables pre-empt EU-ASEAN meeting – The Irrawaddy
May 6th, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=21245
Following the May 5 business summit in Jakarta between the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean)—combined with reports from recently leaked US diplomatic cables shedding light on several European countries’ policies on Burma—suggestions are that the EU’s post-election shift on Burma should not come as a major surprise.
The EU modified its sanctions against the Burmese authorities, relaxing visa restrictions against a number of officials, including the new foreign minister, Wunna Maung Lin, who is now deemed “an essential interlocutor” by the Council of the EU. The Council statement said that the amendments were intended “to encourage and respond to improvements in governance and progress, in the hope that a greater civilian character of the government will help in developing much needed new policies.” (more…)
EU official to visit Thailand, Discuss Burmese Refugee Camps – The Irrawaddy
March 1st, 2011
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20854
BANGKOK—The lead European Union (EU) official on humanitarian issues will visit Thailand next week to meet government officials and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to assess the situation in Burmese refugees camps in northern Thailand.
The visit by EU Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva comes after NGOs and Burmese exile groups complained of cuts in humanitarian aid to refugees in the camps. Many of the refugee camps have been in place since the 1980s and their population is around 150,000.
Mathias Eick, the Regional Information Officer for ECHO, the European Commission’s (EC) humanitarian arm, said that the EC’s funding “has remained more or less constant over the last few years, at around 12.5 million euros per annum.” (more…)
Political Burlesque Follows Economic Chaos in Ireland – ISN
February 3rd, 2011
Ireland’s economy has shrunk by over 20 percent since the Celtic Tiger’s heyday, and a February 25 election could see the country’s political map redrawn.
For the birds? Ireland's politicians have come under relentless attack in recent months. (Photo, Dublin city centre Jan 2001, taken by Simon Roughneen)
The echo-chamber that is Irish political punditry has seen an over-used acronym get another airing in the past few weeks: “GUBU”, coined by the late Conor Cruise O’Brien, former UN diplomat, Irish Government Minister and editor of The Observer, stands for “Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented”. Whenever something controversial or unusual takes place in Irish politics, GUBU is the shorthand of choice, irrespective of hyperbole or appropriateness. (more…)
Charcoals in winter: China comes calling in Europe – Asia Sentinel/Jakarta Globe
January 6th, 2011
http://asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2904&Itemid=422
DUBLIN – Europe is becoming a new horizon for China’s business-based diplomacy, less than a year after the European Union overtook the US to become China’s second-largest trading partner. Chinese investment expansion is increasingly turning to Europe, and it is finding a grateful audience.
Last September, before the arrival of the International Monetary Fund and an €85 billion bailout offer-you-can’t-refuse for the economy once known as the Celtic Tiger, Ireland Prime Minister Brian Cowen tried to sell Chinese investors on the proposition that the country could be a low-tax Anglophone gateway to Europe.
After meeting with a Politburo delegation in Dublin, Cowen said that China’s representatives had vowed to be “as helpful as they can to a friend like Ireland in the difficult times that we have.” That friendship appears to include a consortium of Chinese investors who are starting work on “an investment gateway to Europe” – an industrial park in central Ireland. (more…)
Ireland to Burma, voodoo politics – The Irrawaddy
December 30th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20438
Bleak midwinter at Dublin Airport's new Terminal 2 (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
DUBLIN — While doing research on folk beliefs in Ireland in the early 20th century, an American anthropologist asked an elderly woman if she believed in fairies. “No, I do not, sir,” came the decisive reply, which she diluted with the following cryptic qualifier: “However, they are there anyway.”
This well-known anecdote might be apocryphal, and the supernatural is long gone from Irish popular culture, but there are elements of the mystical about the country’s recent economic boom-to-bust saga.
From the mid-1990s to 2007, Ireland’s economic boom changed a nation of emigrants into one where around 10 percent of the population were recently arrived immigrants, many from Eastern Europe. Growth ranged from 5-10 percent over a 15-year period and Ireland acquired the “Celtic Tiger” moniker, after a Morgan Stanley economist compared the transformation of the North Atlantic island with the Asian Tiger economies of South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.
Since 2008, however, Ireland’s GDP has contracted by 14 percent and its unemployment rate is now around the same percentage.
One Asian country that was never close to joining the Tiger ranks was Burma (more…)
Businessman’s Son Takes Sanctions Case to Court of Justice – The Irrawaddy
September 30th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=19591&Submit=Submit
Pye Phyo Tay Za, the son of Tay Za, a businessman with close links to Burma’s military government, is appealing a decision taken earlier this year which maintains European Union (EU) financial sanctions and travel ban against him.
The case is now before the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, which is the highest court in the EU in terms of EU law, and pits Pye Phyo against the Council of the European Union, the European Commission and the United Kingdom.
On May 19, Pye Phyo Tay Za lost a legal bid at the General Court to have EU sanctions overturned. He was ordered to pay the court costs for the Council of the EU. He is seeking that the entire May 19 decision be overturned, that the sanctions regulations be rendered null and void in his case, and that the Council foot the bill for this appeal and for the previous case. (more…)
EU Sanctions on Tay Za’s Son Upheld – The Irrawaddy
July 8th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=18909
In a May 19 court judgment that went almost unnoticed, Pye Phyo Tay Za, the son of junta-linked businessman Tay Za, lost a legal bid to have EU sanctions against him overturned and was ordered to pay the court costs for the Council of the European Union.
Pye Phyo had argued that he is neither a member of Burma’s military government nor associated with it, and does not benefit from “the administration of that government.” His lawyers, London-based law firm Carter-Ruck, claimed that “neither the applicant [Pye Phyo] nor his father received any benefits from the regime.”
But Tay Za is widely-regarded as having built a multifaceted, multi-billion dollar business empire based on close connections with Burma’s ruling military, including junta-chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe. (more…)
