Eir's biggest shareholder, Xavier Niel, is expected to reap a dividend running to hundreds of millions of euro following the telecoms company's decision to sell a large minority stake in its fibre network to French fund Infravia, according to a report in the Sunday Times. While no price was revealed at the announcement of the deal on Friday, the sale of the stake, dubbed Project Connemara, is expected to release upwards of €1 billion. The proceeds will be used to pay down some debt, but it is also almost certain to deliver a bonanza for shareholders – Niel, his French telecom company Iliad, and hedge funds Davidson Kempner and Anchorage.
National Broadband Ireland could get more State cash
Taxpayers could yet have to provide additional subsidy payments over and above the €2.6 billion in public money committed by the government to deliver the National Broadband Plan, according to the Sunday Business Post. According to information obtained by the newspaper, the Minister for Communications can provide further public money over and above the maximum contracted subsidy available to National Broadband Ireland in certain circumstances. In its official announcement of the signing of the contract in 2019, the government referred to the subsidy figure as "the maximum possible investment by the State".
Housing for All won’t mean more new-builds for private buyers
There will be no increase in the number of new-build homes available to purchase on the private market this year, a Sunday Business Post analysis has found. Despite a rise in the rate of homebuilding, the latest available data shows that the State's plans to deliver a significant increase in the level of social housing and cost-rental homes this year will absorb a significant chunk of homes typically sold on the open market to private households.The revelation comes as the Government has asked IDA Ireland to headhunt large international construction companies to come to Ireland to help solve the acute shortage of new-builds.
Kingspan told to recall Grenfell insulation
*Kingspan, the Irish building materials company, has been ordered by a UK regulator to recall all batches of an insulation product that was used in Grenfell tower, the 24-storey block of flats in London that caught fire in 2017 with the loss of 72 lives, according to a report in the Sunday Times. However, the company says the recall applies only to batches made in the last four months of last year which have not already been installed.
The company confirmed this weekend that it has stopped all British sales of K15 on the instructions of the Office for Product Safety and Standards.
SSE says funding big Irish projects ‘harder to justify’ if delays continue
SSE, one of the largest offshore wind energy developers, has said investment in other large projects in Ireland will be "more difficult to justify" to its board given delays it has experienced at its offshore wind farm project in Arklow, according to an article in the Sunday Independent. The company, which claims to have the largest offshore wind development pipeline in Britain and Ireland, made the comment in an email sent to the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications.
* This article was edited on Sunday, January 30th, 2022
