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Irish Independent
12-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
The week ahead in business: fintech summit, eurozone GDP and online safety panel
Organised around the theme of 'Trade, Technology, and Policy: The Changing Dynamics of Growth,' it will look at the challenges facing the US and EU economies. Speakers include Adriana Kugler, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The annual one-day National Fintech Summit will be staged at Croke Park tomorrow. It's billed as a platform for players in the Irish fintech sector to network and collaborate. Attendees will include banks, start-ups, SMEs and policymakers, and they will take part in discussions about EU regulations, tech transformation, open banking, global fintech trends and, inevitably, AI. On Wednesday, the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA) will host a panel discussion on the Digital Services Act, which is an EU regulation that aims to protect people online by pushing platforms to address harmful content. This event is being held in collaboration with the Economic Regulators Network and speakers will include John Evans, the Digital Services Commissioner with the Irish media regulator Coimisiún na Meán. Members of Financial Services Ireland will convene on Friday at the Alex Hotel in Dublin for their annual lunch. Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe will deliver the keynote address at the event. On the same day, Enterprise Ireland will host a semiconductor meet-up for people from the industry, with the aim of offering a platform for discussions on innovation and collaboration in their line of work. This week the Central Statistics Office (CSO) will announce Ireland's trade balance for the month of March, showing the level of goods exported and imported. There was a huge spike in exports in the first two months of the year, due to US importers stocking up their warehouses as a precaution against US president Donald Trump's tariffs. That trend probably continued into March. On Thursday, Eurostat will release an initial estimate of the eurozone's economic growth for the first quarter of the year. It will also provide an Industrial Production report for March, looking at the performance of factories, mines and utilities, which might give us an insight into how much all the recent global uncertainty has affected the euro area. There will be results on Tuesday from DCC, the leading Irish international sales, marketing and support services group which is listed in London but has its headquarters in Dublin.
Extra.ie
08-05-2025
- Business
- Extra.ie
Pharma exports from Ireland doubled 'to avoid Trump tax bills'
Pharma exports from Ireland to the US multiplied in February and March as firms rushed to avoid Donald Trump's huge tariffs. Around half a year's supply of medicines, worth $ 42 billion, were shipped to the US from Ireland and stockpiled in advance of the US president's sweeping 'Liberation Day' charges. Mr Trump has repeatedly declared that he intends to target Ireland's pharma industry, a key driver of our corporation tax receipts. US President Donald Trump. Pic: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images One economist described the export figures as 'gargantuan' and aimed solely at avoiding tax. 'They knew the tariffs were coming and they massively ramped up shipments to get in ahead of the tariffs, it's as plain and simple as that,' said Dan O'Brien, chief economist with the Institute of International and European Affairs in Dublin. 'It's incredible numbers. Basically, it means the pharma sector has ramped up production and is shipping everything it possibly can before potential tariffs hit.' In his April 2 announcement, Mr Trump imposed a 25% tariff on the EU, which has since been paused for 90 days, but pharmaceuticals were excluded. However, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Tánaiste and Trade Minister Simon Harris in advance of this that sector-specific tariffs would follow, which has left the Government and the industry bracing for a major shock. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Pic:) Last month, Mr Trump said tariffs on pharmaceutical goods would come in the 'not too distant future'. 'We don't make our own drugs, our own pharmaceuticals – we don't make our own drugs anymore. The drug companies are in Ireland, in lots of other places, like China. And all I have to do is impose a tariff. The more, the faster they move here,' he said. Data released by the United States Census Bureau, the American equivalent to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), this week explicitly highlighted the increase in the deficit between the US and Ireland between February and March. The deficit with Ireland increased $ 15.3 billion to $29.3 billion in March. Exports increased $ 0.1 billion to $ 1.4 billion and imports increased $ 15.5 billion to $ 30.7 billion,' the bureau said. Some $ 14 billion of the $ 15.5 billion in February related to pharmaceutical goods, while $ 28 billion of the $ 30.7 billion in March related to pharmaceutical goods being exported into the United States from Ireland. That's $ 42 billion of pharmaceuticals over February and March. Pharma exports from Ireland to the US multiplied in February and March as firms rushed to avoid Donald Trump's huge tariffs. Pic: Getty Images Economist Mr O'Brien said the impact on the Irish Exchequer would likely be that these companies would send their taxes to Revenue 'earlier than expected' and 'bring forward the booking of profits'. He said it would 'lead to a bump in corporation tax, followed by a fall back'. Mr O'Brien warned that it 'could also lead to some reduction in staff levels, if they have really ramped up production' but that this was unlikely due to the highly technical nature of these jobs, but said it remained a risk. Economist with the Council on Foreign Relations, Brad Setser, who reviews the data on an ongoing basis, said the numbers were 'crazy'. He said the figures had occurred because the US and EU pharmaceutical companies decided to avoid any tax ahead of the tariffs. Mr Setser said that pharmaceutical companies in Ireland were exporting around € 5 billion a month to the US last year, but March's figure was an increase by a factor of five. 'It would suggest several firms have moved supply for much of the year into the United States,' he remarked. He said if the figure were annualised, it would represent half a percentage point of the United States' GDP. 'If anyone was in any doubt, companies were moving at least a half year's supply into the United States [ahead of tariffs].' 'There is no doubt that Ireland is the global centre of tax avoidance by American pharmaceutical firms and Singapore is a distant second,' he added. 'The tariffs are a frontal blow to Irish pharmaceutical tax avoidance,' he added. An Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association spokeswoman said it is not in a position to comment on the figures. Enterprise Minister Peter Burke previously said that an increase in exports in January was 'not specifically' due to stockpiling by pharmaceutical companies. Speaking last month, he said: 'You'd be very much aware that our pharma exports are very complex. We do know the amount we export. About 84% of those products are incomplete, and that poses a very significant challenge.' The Government has moved to support the pharmaceutical sector in recent months. In April, a number of large pharmaceutical companies warned about the EU's lack of competitiveness in the sector. The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) conducted a survey of its members last month on the matter, to which 18 replied It identified as much as 85% of capital expenditure investments (approximately € 50.6 billion) and as much as 50% of R&D expenditure (approximately € 52.6 billion) potentially at risk across the EU. The CEOs called for immediate action on achieving a competitive EU market that attracts, values and rewards innovation in line with other economies at the forefront of patient care. They also called for a strengthening, rather than weakening, of Europe's intellectual property provisions. They also said that the EU should adopt a 'world-leading' regulatory framework, conducive to innovation, and that it should ensure 'policy coherence' across 'environmental and chemical legislation' to secure a resilient manufacturing and supply chain of medicines in Europe.
Irish Examiner
28-04-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Online pornography telling teenage boys inflicting violence and degrading sex acts on girls 'is normal'
The normalisation and widespread availability of online pornography is 'cementing and solidifying' gender stereotypes and violence against women and girls, a UN expert has said. Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, told a webinar in Dublin that adolescent boys were being told by pornography that inflicting violence on girls, and degrading them, is 'normal and part of sexual relations'. She said countries should not tolerate a situation where they have laws against gender violence in the offline world, but a 'jungle free-for-all' online. Ms Alsalem also condemned the 'unfolding genocide' against Palestinians which, she said, involved the 'large-scale killing of Palestinian women' in Gaza. She said there were specific international protections for women under the Geneva Convention and other humanitarian laws and said Palestinian women in Gaza were being targeted to limit their 'reproductive capacity' to bear children that are Palestinian. The UN independent consultant said the level at which this was being done was 'unprecedented' in any conflict and was being used as a 'genocidal tool'. Speaking more generally, she told a webinar organised by the Institute of International and European Affairs, she felt the world had entered a worrying period for women and girls. 'I think we are actually in a phase where we seem to be cementing and solidifying gender stereotypes rather than undermining them or fighting them,' she said. 'Some of the most pernicious, sexist stereotypes that fuel violence against women and girls are those that objectify females, that sexualise them, that commodify females, eroticise violence, due to things like normalisation and immense dissemination of pornography and consumption of pornography and attempts to normalise the purchase of sexual acts and buying of women.' Ms Alsalem said a report she published last year put forward the proposition that 'pornography is actually online prostitution' and could be described as 'crime scenes'. She said there was 'no effective' age verification online in terms of what children could access. 'Adolescent boys, even younger boys, access pornography at liberty," she said. It creates views in their head that inflicting violence on girls, sexualising them, subjecting them to degrading and violent and humiliating acts — some of them life-threatening, like strangulation — is normal and part of sexual relations. 'And girls, on the other side, are feeling this tremendously, they are feeling hyper-sexualised, [that] this is a normal part of what society expects of them, to attend to male sexual needs.' She said a comprehensive approach was needed to combat the problem beyond regulation and criminalisation: '[We need a] lot more education, how to talk about gender equality, disseminate sex education [that] focuses more on equal dignified relationship between men and boys and women and girls. "I don't like the word 'toxic masculinity', [but] how to be male in a society that doesn't glorify violence and misogyny.' On trans' rights, she said everyone should be free and have the right to assume a gender identity that is different than what it was at birth. But she argued for the protection of women-only safe spaces, whether in sports, in changing rooms or quotas for political representation. She said while there were 'tensions in human rights', it was 'very clear' protections for women and girls against discrimination was 'based on sex' and that was understood to be biological sex. Read More GP: Women disclosing serious physical injuries due to sexual acts by partners
