On the front of The Irish Times is the news that both AIB and Bank of Ireland have passed an EU-wide stress test that has been carried out by the Committee of European Banking Supervisors. Happy days, you’d think. Well maybe, but maybe not.
Only seven of the 91 European banks failed – five in Spain, one in Greece, and, surprisingly, one in Germany – and none of these were major financial institutions, raising concerns that the stress test wasn’t stringent enough.
The Irish Independent reports that a spate of new home-loan rate hikes will tip many homeowners who are currently struggling ‘right over the edge’. Permanent TSB, one of the biggest mortgage lenders out there, confirmed on Friday that its standard variable rate customers would be hit by a 0.5% hike from 3 August.
The Irish Examiner reports that AdVIC, the Advocates of Victims of Homicide are calling for a national debate on knife crime after yet another young man was stabbed in what was a minor row. They also have a story claiming that the Government are now playing down earlier rumblings that a swathe of new tolls are to be introduced on our roads.
Elsewhere on the front pages there’s a picture of Donncha O’Callaghan who is in Haiti as part of his role as a UNICEF Ireland ambassador (Examiner), Fine Gael are pledging to replace all members of State Boards (Times) and there’s a story about a book written in Germany 100 years ago that predicted we’d be using mobile phones by now and that there’d be WiFi (Times). Impressive stuff. The book did, however, claim that we’d have cured blindness with Radium, children would be taken from their mothers at birth and returned – potty trained and educated – 30 years later, and that we’d all be living in underwater cities.
