The Front Pages
The morning papers will not brighten up your Monday by any means as the front pages are filled with gloom. The volcanic ash cloud looks set to affect Ireland’s tourism industry as we near peak season, while Minister for Finance has been up all night with other European finance heads to come up with an answer to Greece’s financial mess. Meanwhile, at home there are 6,000 families awaiting social welfare for the past ten weeks.
Airports closed, yet again, and now the concern for Irish hotels, restaurants and pubs is that the summer tourism trade in the country will take a massive hit. The Irish Independent draws the conclusion, from information passed on by Met Eireann and the Irish Aviation Authority, that the airport chaos may not be over as soon as initially expected. On the short-term, the outlook for the coming days does not look positive and we can expect further flight cancellations.
The Irish Exmainer also runs the tourism concern story and claims that Irish hotels may lose “€20m in ash crisis.â€
Also headlined is the social welfare predicament which 6,000 Irish householders find themselves in. The low income families who have applied for the Family Income supplement have been waiting over ten weeks for any payment.
While all this is going on in our country, the Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan was awake until 2am this morning trying to figure out where to get a kitty together to bail out euro governments. €7.04 billion is the figure that Ireland would lend to Greece, according to The Irish Times, if loans were raised from the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission. Mr Lenihan has yet to make it clear where Ireland fully fits into the equation as the talks with Euro ministers continue.
