CurrentAccount: You wonder sometimes why Michael O'Leary would need a PR handler, since the Ryanair supremo always seems more than comfortable arranging and starring in his own communications.
But the trouble with having such a ubiquitous public profile is that sometimes you can get your lines mixed up. As he set about explaining the logic of Ryanair's €1.4 billion bid for Aer Lingus yesterday, O'Leary was keen to play down competition concerns as a result of any such takeover.
Noting that the competition issues would be addressed in Brussels, the Ryanair chief executive suggested that this should not present a problem as this European merger involved two "relatively small" airlines.
Current Account assumes Michael is not talking about the same Ryanair that he keeps insisting is the largest carrier in Europe - bigger even than British Airways.
A few moments later, O'Leary insisted that, even within Ireland, a merged Aer Lingus and Ryanair would face extensive competition.
And that would be from . . . ? British Midland and Aer Arann, apparently.
It takes some mental gymnastics to arrive at that conclusion consider O'Leary's comment just over a month ago concerning the impending Aer Lingus flotation: "I have a policy of not commenting on small regional airlines and their plans to float," the Ryanair chief joked.
Only in a very upside-down world is Aer Lingus a small regional airline while Aer Arann is serious comeptition.
Reheating the property market with free cash
You know mortgage lenders are starting to feel the pinch when you see them offering cash to attract your business.
Despite growing evidence that Ireland's overheated property market is finally beginning to run out of steam, lenders, developers and estate agents have been at pains to dismiss such talk - conceding only that there is a temporary seasonal oversupply of property on the market.
The decision by Ireland's largest bank, AIB, to try to entice first-time buyers with the offer of a €2,000 cash bonus gives the lie to such denials.
AIB, of course, is presenting the bonus cash as an effort to build market share. The bank's head of mortgage products, Marian McCarville, says "supporting" first-time buyers is a "natural follow-through on the support we give them" in earlier years.
Strange then that applicants must apply for a mortgage and receive an offer letter between next Monday and the end of the year - a period that pretty closely matches the current property selling season that seems to be, at best, stalling.
Taxing discrepancy
Property tax incentive schemes apparently cost the exchequer around €246 million in 2004, the latest year for which figures are available.
Minister for Finance Brian Cowen yesterday told his opposite number in Labour, Joan Burton, that a total of €586 million was included in relevant income tax returns for claims on a range of property-based incentives. "This figure would correspond to a maximum exchequer cost of the order of €246 million for these returns in terms of income tax forgone," he said.
Burton has been looking for information on the total tax forgone since 2000 on property tax incentive schemes.
However, Cowen said it was impossible to break out that figure as, prior to 2004, claims for tax incentive schemes on property were lumped in with other claims for relief on income tax returns.
At least the Minister won't have to worry about similar embarassing questions about his pension incentive to SSIA holders.
While the Department of Finance has been painfully reticent in moving to close off tax incentives on property developments, the Minister has been quick to clamp down on the prospect of low-earning pensioners getting a tax break through a loophole in his €1 for €3 SSIA-to-pension transfer programme.
