The Irish Independent reports that single people applying to purchase 'affordable' homes in west Dublin will have to have a salary of at least €67,000 to qualify.

The Irish Independent also reports that a developer who has offered one of the highest prices in history for a chunk of Irish property has been warned not to turn it into a high rise development.

The Irish Times reports that the country's leading estate agents have strongly criticised the "doom and gloom pundits" of the ESRI for claiming that house prices are overvalued by 15 per cent. They said that, while property price inflation has slowed, house prices will continue to increase, albeit at a slower rate.

At the annual conference of the Irish Auctioneers & Valuers Institute (IAVI), chief executive officer Alan Cooke asked: "How many times has the ESRI cried wolf?" He said the "market is slowing down, but that is not a crisis". He added that "value is based on supply and demand and demand is still there with the economy continuing to grow".

The IAVI, which represents more than 2,000 auctioneers, estate agents and valuers, was meeting in Kilkenny at the weekend, where its incoming president, Robert Ganly, said the housing market was now "stable and realistic" and "much safer than a year ago when price escalation was out of control".

However the Government's failure to resolve uncertainty over stamp duty is "making buyers hesitant and driving money out of Ireland". Mr Ganly said it was "unacceptable" that a family home in Dublin could attract a stamp duty rate of 9 per cent and criticised Fianna Fáil for "turning their backs on the issue".

"Cutting stamp duty could actually increase Government revenues," he added, citing the example of the halving of capital gains tax from 40 per cent to 20 per cent, which had led to a significant increase in Government revenues.

Mr Ganly also called on the planning authorities in south Dublin to allow more development to alleviate "a severe shortage of three- and four-bedroom family houses" and claimed "there is not enough serviced land nationwide".

Michael Grehan of Sherry Fitzgerald said "house buyers are being more cautious and are more price-sensitive, but demand is still there and would be much stronger if stamp duty was not at such penal rates".

Ken MacDonald of Hooke & MacDonald described the ESRI analysis as "seriously flawed" and said it bore "no relation to how the housing market is actually performing".

He said "price moderation is mistakenly seen as a sign of weakness rather than a sign of long-term sustainability".

Wade Wise, a director of Savills HOK, said that while "the market has slowed, prices are not overvalued and people will look back in six or nine months and think 'we should have bought'." He expected house prices to increase by at least 3 per cent this year.

EU commissioner Charlie McCreevy, a guest speaker at the conference, declined to comment on the IAVI's views, saying that it would be "inappropriate in the run-up to an election".

Visiting Kilkenny for a separate engagement, the Tánaiste, Michael McDowell, told The Irish Times that "the present structure of stamp duty is unfair and not sustainable in the long term". He confirmed the PDs would campaign "to end the payment of stamp duty for first-time purchasers".

The Irish Times also reports that the Government's greenhouse gas policy could cost the taxpayer up to €1 billion over the next five years, according to a leading renewable energy company.

Under current policy, the State intends buying carbon credits from Russia and eastern Europe instead of cutting emissions.

Carbon credits are "licences" traded between countries and organisations. Under the Kyoto and Marrakesh treaties, countries or groups with low or falling emissions can sell credits to those with high emission levels. They allow the purchaser to continue producing high levels of greenhouse gases.

In the Republic's case, the State is buying credits from eastern Europe and Russia because the numbers of industries in those countries have fallen over the last 20 years, which means they have had a related fall in greenhouse gas emissions.

However, Mark Ennis, Airtricity's chief executive of supply in Ireland, warned at the weekend that the Government has underestimated both the price of credits on the open market and the rate at which the Republic's greenhouse gas emissions are going to increase.

"If you take Ireland's projected growth rate between now and 2020, we're going to generate 33 million tonnes [of greenhouse gas] above our 1990 levels.

"At the same time, the projected price of carbon credits is likely to be €15 to €20 per tonne in 2008; that's projected to rise to €38 by 2012, and it's reasonable to assume that it will be €40 to €50 by 2020.

"The Government's figures are showing that this will cost €270 million over the next five years. They've underestimated the quantity and the price. It's going to be at least €500 million and it could go up to €1 billion."

Airtricity's group chief executive Eddie O'Connor also warned yesterday that the final bill for carbon credits could be as high as €1.5 billion by 2020, a little more than €115 million a year.

"It is inexplicable why the Government would contemplate purchasing licences to pollute from Russia," Mr O'Connor said .

"They say that the cost will be €270 million. The cost is more likely to be €1 billion to €1.5 billion, all taxpayer money."

He added that this would be enough to build wind farms with the capacity to generate 3,000 megawatts of electricity, over half the State's current needs.

Mr Ennis said the policy of purchasing carbon credits would not reduce greenhouse gas emissions as the countries from which the State was purchasing them have already had their carbon output cut by the closure of many of their industries.

The Airtricity executives said the Republic should be taking the lead in investing in renewable energy and in developing interconnection.

Mr Ennis said while the company was involved in developing wind-generation projects, it favoured support for all types of renewable electricity generation.

"We've missed an opportunity in this country. The Government declared a moratorium on all offshore wind projects in 2003, and no new projects have been connected up to the grid since then."

All other European countries with a coastlines were "falling over themselves" to get offshore wind generation off the ground.

The recent Government White Paper on energy includes a commitment to have one-third of all energy needs met from renewable sources by 2020. Mr Ennis described this as an aspiration.

"They have no chance of delivering on that with no investment in green energy and interconnection."

He said to meet this target Eirgrid (which manages the national electricity grid) and the Commission for Energy Regulation needed to join forces with the industry and focus on developing renewable energy infrastructure.

The Irish Examiner reports that Food Surplus Management (FSM) — an Enterprise Ireland client company specialising in recovery of out-of-date packaged food products for the wholesale and retail sectors — has been awarded a Category 3 Intermediate Plant Licence.

This permits it to recycle packaged waste food into products for the pet food, animal feed, technical and bio-fuel industries. This can reduce the amount of food waste sent to landfill.

FSM becomes one of the first companies in Europe to achieve the licence.

The Financial Times reports that the characterisation of private equity groups as destroyers of jobs and asset-strippers is misplaced, according to a study of some of the biggest deals, which shows that the industry is in fact more likely to add jobs than reduce them.

An FT analysis of the 30 largest private equity deals concluded during 2003 and 2004, said by Dealogic to be worth more than £31bn, revealed that many more jobs have been added during the intervening years than were lost, contrary to the common trade union complaint.

In crude terms the companies have added 36,000 jobs to the 141,000 staff they employed when they were bought – a rise of 25 per cent.

In at least one case, Fitness First, the extra jobs were added as a result of overseas expansion rather than growing the business at home. But while one complaint of the trade unions is that private equity-controlled companies have cut employment in the higher-cost UK market in favour of establishing factories overseas, the deals studied by the FT suggested this was not a widespread phenomenon.

Unions will point to the fact that jobs have still been lost in just under half of the deals, although the scale of individual losses have mostly been low. But private equity owners pointed out that staff reductions in just under half the cases were due mainly to subsequent sales of subsidiaries and assets.

Job gains conversely have been fuelled by acquisitions as private equity owners have built on their original investment. The biggest single gain was at Southern Cross nursing homes which, after a series of purchases, has lifted staff levels to 30,000 compared with 8,000 three years ago.

Employment under private equity ownership has also been boosted by organic growth. New Look, the fashion retailer, which has appointed Merrill Lynch to advise the company as it plans a possible £2bn sale, has increased staff by 3,300 to 15,400, a rise of almost 28 per cent since it went private in a £699m deal in 2004.

The biggest single loss of jobs occurred at Linpac, the international paper and packaging group, which was sold for £1bn in 2003 in a deal backed by Montagu Private Equity. Since then employment has fallen by almost 3,900 to 8,166 as non-core parts of its business were sold to fund investment in “areas of growth and opportunity.

Trade unions have highlighted job losses at several high profile private equity backed deals including at the AA motoring organisation, Iglo Birds Eye, the frozen foods company, and the Little Chef motorway restaurant chain. The TUC has called for called for tougher tax curbs on private companies to discourage them from destabilising businesses by saddling acquisitions with debts and threatening jobs.

Paul Kenny, GMB general secretary, said: “The FT finding that some companies owned by private equity grew jobs and turnover does not invalidate GMB experience of job losses at the hands of private equity in the mature sectors of the economy like AA and Birds Eye. Neither is this finding a justification for tax breaks, asset-stripping, saddling thriving companies with massive debts and the culture of secrecy.”

A BVCA spokesman said: “We welcome the independent research conducted by the Financial Times that shows that overall the private equity and the venture capital industry in the UK has a broadly positive effect on employment.”

The FT also reports that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts was on Sunday night in advanced talks to acquire First Data, the credit card processing group, for $34 per share, or about $26bn in cash, people familiar with the matter said.

A purchase of First Data by KKR would extend the wave of large takeovers by the world’s largest private equity groups thanks to the availability of cheap debt to finance these deals.

Ever since First Data spun off its Western Union money transfer division last year, it has been rumoured as a potential buy-out candidate because of its stable cashflow and its digestible size.

Based in Colorado, First Data operates at the intersection of the financial services and technology industries, helping 1,900 card issuers process debit and credit card transactions.

KKR, one of the oldest US private equity firms, has been on a frenzied buying spree in recent months. In February, it teamed up with TPG, a rival, to acquire TXU, the Texas-based energy group, for $45bn including debt. If that deal is approved by regulators and shareholders, it could rank as the largest buy-out on record. In March, KKR also agreed to buy Dollar General, a discount retailer, for $7bn. In Europe, KKR is pursuing an acquisition of Alliance Boots, the large drug store chain.

KKR is offering to pay First Data shareholders more than a 20 per cent premium over the company’s closing share price of $26.90 on Friday.

In the current private equity boom, many critics contend that companies are selling out too easily to buy-out groups because of the lucrative incentives that are being offered to executives. A deal with KKR could offer a graceful exit to Henry Duques, the First Data chief executive who has been with the business since it was part of American Express in the 1980s. Mr Duques had been

The New York Times reports that China has called on the Bush administration to reverse a decision to impose steep duties on Chinese exports of coated paper, state-controlled news media reported during the weekend.

The Commerce Ministry issued a strong protest over the measures announced on Friday, which some American industry officials have suggested could be the first step in imposing tariffs on a wide range of manufactured imports from China, including steel, textiles, plastics and machinery.

“This action of the U.S. side goes against the consensus reached by the leaders of both countries to resolve disputes through dialogue,” the official New China News Agency quoted a Commerce Ministry spokesman, Wang Xinpei, as having said. “China strongly requires the United States to reconsider the decision and make prompt changes.”

Since the Democrats won control of Congress in November, the Bush administration has come under intensified pressure to curb the trade imbalance with China.

The American trade deficit with China reached a record $233 billion in 2006, and influential lawmakers and industry groups say the imbalance continues to widen as China aggressively subsidizes exports.

Carlos M. Gutierrez, the secretary of commerce, said that preliminary duties of 10.9 percent to 20.35 percent would be applied to coated paper imports from China to counter the subsidies received by the manufacturers of these products.

The Commerce Department said in a statement that the volume of imports of coated paper from China last year increased by 177 percent from 2005 and were valued around $224 million.

The move to impose duties as a penalty for Chinese subsidies is something of a departure from American practice over more than two decades. Washington had refrained from applying these sanctions on imports from so-called nonmarket economies like China, where it was difficult to calculate the value of government assistance to industry.

Instead, it relied on antidumping actions to combat what it said were unfair Chinese trade practices.

Mr. Wang said that the Commerce Department had ignored strong objections from China in breaking with its previous policy, the official press agency reported.

“The decision brings great harm to the interests and feelings of Chinese business people and is not acceptable,” Mr. Wang added.

The NYT also reports that relations between Apple Inc. and the EMI Group, once at odds over the trademark rights to the Apple name, the record label of the Beatles, seem to be getting better all the time.

On Sunday, Steven P. Jobs, the Apple chief executive, announced a joint news conference to be held in London on Monday with Eric L. Nicoli, chief executive of EMI, the British music giant.

An Apple spokesman in London had no comment when asked for details, but the impending news conference set off a torrent of speculation on possible agreements between Apple and EMI. Theories ranged from a Yellow Submarine iPod factory-filled with Beatles music to a more radical shift toward selling digital music without copy protection.

Speculation that the Beatles’ music, which has been unavailable on legitimate digital music services, might soon be licensed for download from Apple’s iTunes service has been rife since early February, when Apple Inc. and Apple Corps, the guardian of the Beatles’ music interests, announced that they had settled their dispute over the technology company’s name and its use of an apple logo.

Both EMI and Apple have recently indicated an interest in making music available without antipiracy protection.

In recent months, EMI has discussed proposals to sell unprotected songs through a variety of digital music services that compete with Apple, including online retail units operated by RealNetworks and Yahoo, according to people briefed on the company’s affairs. But those plans appeared to stall after the parties could not agree on financial terms.

Mr. Jobs waded into the controversy this year with a letter, posted on Apple’s Web site, that urged the music industry to abandon the use of the digital rights management technologies that limit the ability of consumers to transfer music.

Apple has faced intense criticism from governments and consumer groups across Europe over the last year because of the digital protections on music sold by iTunes. France passed a law intended to encourage the easy transfer of music between digital devices.

While many independent labels already sell music without copy protection, EMI has placed itself at the forefront of the major music companies in questioning the usefulness of such protection.

Last week, Mr. Nicoli told a mobile operators’ meeting in Orlando, Fla., that test sales of unprotected music by a few artists offered some promising results, but did not say whether EMI would expand or abandon the practice.

If the announcement on Monday does involve the Beatles, the experiment may be a much-anticipated Yellow Submarine iPod that comes supplied with Beatles tracks, according to Mark Mulligan, a vice president at JupiterResearch who specializes in digital music.

“The trademark settlement deal clearly raised the possibility of Apple selling EMI music in a physical format,” Mr. Mulligan said. “This is an original idea and helps Apple with their core business, selling devices.”

Such a device had been rumored for introduction on Valentine’s Day, but never appeared, Mr. Mulligan said. He added that speculation that the announcement might involve the sale of music without copy protection is a result of EMI’s drawn-out negotiations with a number of music retailers.

“Negotiations for sale of unprotected music through retailers, including iTunes, Napster and others, just faded out,” Mr. Mulligan said. “The idea of a major record label selling unprotected music was unthinkable a year ago, but is now under serious consideration.”

The possible sale of unprotected music has been driven in part by the much larger illegal downloading markets, he said. Some European countries have so much piracy that five songs are downloaded illegally for each song sold over the Internet, according to JupiterResearch.

Mr. Mulligan insisted on holding in reserve one theory about Apple’s plans: “Knowing Apple, they could be bringing out a major surprise we have not yet considered.”