London red-faced after Raab’s ‘mind blowing’ Brexit remark

UK Brexit secretary Dominic Raab dropped a clanger that would make even Boris Johnson squirm this week, drawing howls of derision for his admission that he "hadn't quite understood" the importance of the Dover-Calais crossing to British trade.

It’s hard to know what’s more frightening: his ignorance of this, the key artery linking Britain with its biggest trading partner, or the fact that he apparently saw no issue sharing this wisdom with the world as though it were some sort of light bulb moment.

For context, more than half of UK exports each year are EU-bound, while the port in Dover handled a record 2.6 million lorries last year, carrying goods worth up to £122 billion (€140 billion).

“I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing,” Raab said at an event on Brexit and the tech industry.

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Alastair Campbell described the comments as "mind blowing". Worse still, they come on the back of a recent admission by UK Northern Ireland secretary Karen Bradley that she hadn't realised nationalists in the North "don't vote for unionist parties and vice-versa". We're in safe hands.

On the bright side, there was more talk this week of there being a deal in the offing to solve the vexed Border backstop issue, although all parties wisely urged caution following a number of false alarms in recent months.

On the table is for the whole of the UK to remain in the customs union rather than just the North, the latter of which would involve a border in the Irish Sea, something UK prime minister Theresa May has said London could never countenance.

However, Brussels looks set to insist on a Northern Ireland-only "backstop to the backstop" in case talks break down. Cue alarm bells in the DUP with leader Arlene Foster bizarrely accusing May of being "wedded" to the idea of an east-west border.

Earlier in the week, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told May he would consider a “review mechanism” for the backstop, but attached conditions that suggest he remains totally unwilling to depart from the essence of it.

Meanwhile, the European Commission is intensifying preparations for a no-deal with high-level briefings for member states next week on the consequences of a chaotic UK departure.

At home, pharmaceutical companies called on the Government to host a roundtable meeting to ensure the continued supply of medicines as preparations continue for the doomsday scenario of a hard Brexit.

EU-Republic marriage only goes so far

The Republic and its EU partners may be “at one” when it comes to the Brexit talks, but nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to taxes.

Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe was in Brussels for an Ecofin meeting of EU finance ministers and doubled down on the Government’s resistance to a proposed digital tax.

The plan to impose a special tax on the digital revenues of big tech players would cost the Irish exchequer about €160 million as it would ensure companies pay more in big EU markets, meaning they would have less profit to declare here.

Donohoe said the Republic remains firmly opposed to the tax, which is strongly supported by France and Austria, while Germany wants to delay a decision until a new report by the OECD is delivered in 2020.

Separately, the European Commission became the latest influential body to raise concerns about the sustainability of our corporate tax base. It said the uncertainty surrounding it poses a “major risk”.

Receipts from the tax have more than doubled to €8 billion since 2015 amid a massive transfer of multinational assets here in the wake of a clampdown on tax avoidance. However, almost 40 per cent can be linked to just 10 companies.

On that note, social media giant Facebook is on the move after it agreed terms to lease the high-profile 14-acre Bankcentre campus in Ballsbridge – currently occupied by AIB – which will allow it to add 5,000 staff to its Irish operation in the coming years.

Indeed, for now at least, all the signs are good for the economy. The Central Bank said Irish households are, on paper, more than 75 per cent wealthier than they were at the low point of recession.

The net worth of Irish households hit a record €757 billion in the second quarter of this year, eclipsing the boom time pre-crash peak of €719 billion reached in the second quarter of 2007. The figure was driven almost entirely by rising property values.

Ryanair sacks staff from staged photo

There’s never a dull moment over at budget airline Ryanair, which this week sacked six cabin crew members over a staged photograph which purported to show them sleeping on a Spanish airport office floor last month after becoming stranded by bad weather.

They were part of a group of eight pilots and 16 cabin crew based in Portugal who said they were forced to spend several hours in a room after landing at Malaga Airport just after midnight following diversions caused by Hurricane Leslie.

Ryanair said the incident “damaged their employer’s reputation and caused an irreparable breach of trust with these six persons”.

Separately, US shareholders are suing the airline and chief executive Michael O’Leary for making “false and misleading statements” about its industrial relations woes.

A pension fund based in Alabama, claims Ryanair and O’Leary made “false and misleading statements” about relations with workers and unions that artificially inflated the carrier’s share price.

Staying with corporate news, and Swedish home furnishings giant Ikea has rowed back on further expansion of its store network in Ireland, after a strong performance online following its entry a year ago into the ecommerce space.

It had been closely linked with potential development sites in Cork and Dublin over the past 18 months, and is reported to have held discussions with various local authorities, but the plan has been shelved for now.

Elsewhere, Dalata, the largest hotel group in the State, agreed a deal to raise up to €700 million in debt funding from an consortium of six banks to refinance existing debts, acquisitions and the general operation of the group.