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Johnny Green/PA Wire

State-owned British banks ‘bailed out Irish ones by €16bn’ – report

The Sunday Telegraph says a quarter of the British taxpayer’s bailouts of RBS and Lloyds has gone to Ireland.

A NEWSPAPER REPORT has suggested that British taxpayers have bailed out Irish banks to the tune of over €16 billion – with over a fifth of the total British banking bailout bill going to Irish banks.

The Sunday Telegraph reports that the two banks bailed out by the British taxpayer during the banking crisis – the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Lloyds TSB – passed on £14 billion of their taxpayer funding to Irish subsidiaries.

The payments, made between 2009 and 2011, relate to the banks’ Irish subsidiaries, Ulster Bank and Bank of Scotland (Ireland) respectively.

The report, by the paper’s economics editor Philip Aldrick, said RBS had paid a total of £7.6 billion (€9.13 billion) to Ulster Bank in capital contributions, in order to safeguard the bank’s capital reserves after writing off billions in impaired loans to Irish borrowers.

Lloyds meanwhile put £6.41 billion (€7.63 billion) into Bank of Scotland in the same period before it ultimately decided to wind down the business. Former BoS loans are now managed by Certus.

The two UK banks between them were bailed out to the tune of £65 billion (€77.4 billion) by the British taxpayer in 2008 and 2009 when the global banking crisis first emerged – with the amount given to Irish subsidiaries making up over 21 per cent of the total.

The amount is separate to the £3.2 billion (€3.8 billion) bilateral loan being offered to Ireland as part of the EU-IMF bailout programme, which also saw Ireland undertake bilateral loans from Sweden and Denmark.

However, the total UK investment in the two banks is still less than the amount invested by the Irish government in six of its own native national lenders, which resulted in all but one – Bank of Ireland – being under majority state ownership.

So far the Irish government has invested €64.1 billion in its own banking sector, taking stakes in Irish banks which in turn have some overseas subsidiaries.

Read: Gilmore expects promissory note deal before next payment is due

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24 Comments
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    Mute divide by zero
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    Oct 18th 2011, 2:00 PM

    Excellent! The Ark of the Covenant is exactly what we need to show other economies who’s boss….just remember to shut your eyes guys (not you Bertie, Charlie, and Biffo)

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    Mute Brian
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    Oct 18th 2011, 3:03 PM

    Love it!

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    Mute Keith Colton
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    Oct 18th 2011, 3:27 PM

    Who red thumbed this?! Genius idea, although I think it’s already in Hangar 18…

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    Mute Brian Walsh
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    Oct 18th 2011, 3:03 PM

    Actually at the turn of the century, a group of wealthy Americans began excavating at Tara believing that the Ark of the Covenant was buried there. There is still a myth that it is buried somewhere in Ireland having been brought here by Cesair, granddaughter of Noah (yup, the flood guy).
    As long as they do no harm, knock yourselves out. Its amazing that for such an ancient building so little of it is known, although to be fair professor Kelly pulled it apart and gave us the Newgrange we have now, some agree some don’t. That Newgrange itself is hardly known outside Ireland may be a blessing, everyone has heard of the Pyramids, Stonehenge, the Acropolis etc but ask an American or Englishman have they ever heard of Newgrange, sad, I’d love to see it getting recognition but then could it handle 3,4,5 times the tourist numbers? Who knows?

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    Mute Ken Mitchell
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    Oct 19th 2011, 8:33 AM

    it wasn’t wealthy americans, it was a religious sect called the “british Israelites”. Supposedly james joyce went up to tara to try and stop them and he was shot at by the local farmer! I prosed a second chamber in newgrange a few years ago to a historian there and I was poo pooed. At the back of the passage tomb there is what looks like to me a second entrance stone. Other passage tombs in the area have two passages so its entirely possible.

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    Mute Ryan Murphy
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    Oct 18th 2011, 6:42 PM

    Rumour has it that Haughey spent a lot of time there during the works-probably will turn out to be a cave filled with Charvet shirts (size small, with a large neck), fine brandies, and Terry Keane’s smalls.

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    Mute Pete Gibson
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    Oct 18th 2011, 2:20 PM

    The title of the article was about Newgrange.
    It diverted to sites thousands of years more recent in the Middle East.

    No use comparing the Wright Brothers plane to an F16 fighter.

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    Mute Brian
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    Oct 18th 2011, 4:30 PM

    Sounds interesting.

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    Mute stephen corrigan
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    Oct 18th 2011, 4:49 PM

    Was it not teconstructed……ie they would know whats in there!

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    Mute Seamus Foskin
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    Mar 12th 2013, 12:34 AM

    is it not kinda obvious that there has to be more rooms at new grange, a big round building with only one passage in the middle. there has to be something more up there

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    Mute Kevin Quinn
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    Jan 22nd 2012, 2:10 AM

    They found the Ark of the Covenant where Moses placed the 10 Commandments, in a cave under Golgotha.

    http://arkofthecovenant2.blogspot.com/

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