The Front Pages
This morning’s Irish Independent reports that a foreign property company co-owned by disgraced ex-chief executive Sean FitzPatrick received a loan extension worth £2.6m from Anglo Irish Bank on the day it nationalised.
With its headline reading ‘FitzPatrick company got new loan on day Anglo nationalised’, the Independent goes on to mention that Finance Minister Brian Lenihan has stated he was completely unaware of FitzPatrick’s loan, whilst Anglo declined to comment to the broadsheet, citing customer confidentiality.
The Independent’s headline isn’t to be found on the Irish Times front page, whose headline reads ‘Savings to be achieved through cuts not taxes, says Cowen’, after Taoiseach Brian Cowen indicated yesterday that upcoming budget savings will be achieved through expenditure cuts rather than the introduction of any new taxes.
According to Cowen, of the €3bn required savings this year, €1bn is to come from the capital programme, with the remaining €2bn not to stem from taxes, though he hastened to add that “at the end of the day it will be a matter for the Minister of Finance to decide on any taxation matterâ€.
