Ireland

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish goods imports from Britain fell by 65% in January from the same month last year as traders grappled with new customs requirements, COVID-19 restrictions and pre-Brexit stockpiling, Ireland’s statistics service said on Thursday.

The value of imports from Britain, not including the British region of Northern Ireland, fell to 497 million euros ($593 million) in January from 1.403 billion euros in January 2020, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said.

DUBLIN, March 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney is to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Tehran on Sunday in his role as a UN Security Council facilitator of the nuclear deal agreed in 2015 between Iran and major world powers.

Iran has so far refused to take part in a meeting brokered by the European Union between world powers and the United States on reviving its 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal.

DUBLIN, March 1 (Xinhua) -- Bank of Ireland, one of the largest commercial banks in Ireland, confirmed on Monday that it will close 103 branches in Ireland and Northern Ireland of Britain starting from September 2021.

The branches to be closed include 88 in Ireland and 15 in Northern Ireland, according to a detailed list of the impacted branches unveiled by the Bank of Ireland on its official website.

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland was not consulted by the European Commission before it briefly sought to restrict some exports of COVID-19 vaccines by invoking an emergency Brexit clause related to Northern Ireland, Ireland’s European Affairs Minister said on Saturday.

The EU abruptly reversed the plan to use the Article 16 clause to restrict exports of COVID-19 vaccines from crossing the Irish border into the United Kingdom within a matter of hours on Friday after it sent shockwaves through Northern Ireland, London and Dublin.

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Firefighters have brought a large fire at the southern Irish port of Cork under control and no casualties were reported, the port authority, which recently started offering more “Brexit-proof” direct sailings to mainland Europe, said on Saturday.

The blaze began in a grain store at a deepwater berth used for freight services, the port authority said shortly after 0930 GMT, urging local residents to keep all doors and windows shut and remain indoors.

It said just over an hour later that the fire was under control.

DUBLIN, Jan 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Ireland plans to end a ban on travel to the country from Britain on Jan 6 and replace it with stricter COVID-19 testing measures as it seeks to stop the spread of a highly infectious new variant of the virus, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said.

Ireland banned passenger flights and ferries on Dec 21. Some 30,000 people had travelled to Ireland from Britain in the previous two weeks, during which time the new variant was spreading rapidly in parts of Britain.

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said on Monday he hoped that by the end of the week the outline of a Brexit free trade deal will have emerged.

Talking to reporters in Dublin, he added that he got a sense from both negotiating teams that they had made progress.

DUBLIN/LONDON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain and the European Union have a week to 10 days to find a way to unlock trade talks, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Monday, after both sides called on the other to move their position on two of the most troublesome areas.

The trade talks resume on Monday in Brussels after there was little movement on the most contentious areas -- so-called “level playing field” fair competition rules and fisheries --last week when the two sides missed the latest mid-November deadline.

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ryanair RYA.I would not expect to have to pay extra for aircraft deliveries due to a new 15% tariff announced by the European Union this week on Boeing aircraft, a senior executive said on Tuesday.

“We wouldn’t be paying them,” Eddie Wilson, Chief Executive of Ryanair DAC, the largest of the Ryanair Group’s four airlines, told a virtual CAPA aviation summit when asked about the tariffs.

But he said that Ryanair expected that the victory of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden would lead to a “reset” in the trade dispute in any case.

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland will bring in “decisive” nationwide COVID-19 restrictions on Monday but will stop short of reintroducing the kind of lockdown imposed earlier this year, Higher Education Minister Simon Harris said on Sunday.

The government rejected a recommendation by health chiefs two weeks ago to jump Level 5, the highest level of COVID-19 curbs, and instead tightened restrictions in a varied regional approach that Harris said was no longer sufficient.