Current Account: Current Account has a measure of pity for Brian Cowen, Bertie and all the others in Government. No sooner did Cabinet put the finishing touches on their giveaway Budget than the Callely calamity struck before they get the message out.
As PR disasters go, this was supersize stuff. It was bad for the Government and very bad for John Paul, the big-time construction company whose paint job years ago on Callely's home ultimately brought him down.
Even as his career crumbled, the unfortunate Ivor insisted on coming back again and again for more cringe-making bouts of self-justification. These served only to worsen his already grim plight.
From a human perspective, it's never pleasant to observe a person decend deep into the lowly trough of self-destruction. Yet any residual sympathy among Callely's senior colleauges evaporated as he ruined the Budget set-piece in his refusal to go quietly.
First came his failure to stand down on Budget day in the face of the obvious. Then, he went on the Pat Kenny radio show ahead of the Minister for Finance's traditional on-air question and answer session with listeners on the Budget.
Uproar in the Dáil followed over his refusal to make a statement there, delaying Bertie Ahern's speech on the Budget.
The big day was supposed to set the tone the Government's run-in to the next election. And in its ninth year in office, this Government needs all the good publicity it can get. All it got this week were the desperate pleadings of a desperate man. Friggin' hell.
Banks' good times nothing like FAI days
It's been a good week for the Irish banking sector and Minister for Finance Brian Cowen opted not to renew the hated banking levy. The levy, which had cost the banks collectively €100 million a year over each of the last three years, was due to expire at the end of the year. It will not now be extended - a move that is likely to boost the banks' bottom line profits and share ratings.
If the banks have been celebrating, Bank of Ireland business banking director Cathal Muckian has had more cause than most to be in good cheer.
Muckian would have had reason enough to smile with the publication of a survey by the bank earlier in the week showing that it was now the leading lender to the small and medium-sized enterprise sector, holding a 27 per cent share - pipping rival AIB by two percentage points. This is ahead of even its own bullish projections. The bank now expects business bank lending to double in the two years to next March.
Still, Current Account imagines not even this achievement came close to the satisfaction felt by the bank executive at the success of Drogheda United in landing the FAI Cup for the first time in its almost 100-year history.
Muckian, a former Irish soccer international, played for the club and scored five goals in the campaign the last time Drogheda made it to an FAI cup final - in 1976 - when it lost out by a single goal to Bohemians.
More to Dunnes' story
If Dunnes Stores' performance in Northern Ireland, Britain and Spain is anything to go by, all is well at the family-owned supermarket chain.
Accounts newly-filed in the North for a company called Dunnes Stores (Bangor) Ltd show that the pretax profit from the group's international operations grew to £43.19 million (€63.99 million) in the year to January on the back of sales of £231.3 million. Pretax profits in the previous year were £37.27 million on sales of £216.5 million.
These reflect the performance of Dunnes' 23 Northern Ireland stores, nine textile-only stores in Britain and four stores in Spain.
But the handsome performance represents only a small part the Dunnes story. While the company has 87 stores in the Republic, the trading levels in its home unit remains a well-guarded secret.
Dunnes was always a good earner, even in the hardiest days. So it's safe to say that the company has done well in the boomtimes too.
Given the dearth of publicly available information, though, this can only be a matter of conjecture, albeit one that few would dispute.
