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    Show me where the value is in a lifetime of contributing to a private pension?

    If the value of your asset somehow dropped to zero, you would be out-of-pocket by €128k (less the 'dividend' of rental income or accommodation), right? Genuine question, have I misunderstood the definition of liability?
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    Show me where the value is in a lifetime of contributing to a private pension?

    The projected fund value is a useful figure for comparing with other types of investment. It depends on some assumptions, but so does any projection. What you do with that ~750k when it reaches maturity is a whole other story. The projections for "Monthly Income for Life" assumes that you take...
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    Internet Speed

    Hence my emphasis on the word _slightly_ :) A private/3rd party dns server is a much bigger privacy gain when it's used in conjunction with a vpn/proxy. Without the vpn, the _small_ benefit is that the ISP can't pull a customer's dns lookups. They've got to do the tiny bit of extra work to log...
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    Internet Speed

    DNS is the first thing that comes to mind. It's a process which maps domain names (eg. www.foo.com) to ip addresses (eg 134.321.123.222). When you type "www.foo.com" into the browser, the browser asks Eircom's Domain Name Server for the site's ip address. Only at that point can you start...
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    New employer reneging on new job - have left old job

    I'd expect a medical assessment to consider a person's risk factors for future health problems, at least those factors which aren't clearly ruled out by anti-discrimination law.
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    How can lower earners be encouraged to contribute more to their pension funds?

    Ireland's other popular tax-advantaged long-term investment vehicle is property. Admittedly, it's a non-option for low-earning dubs at this stage, but to whatever extent an Irish household budget has got an "investment" category, Home Equity and Pension are the major competitors. Any measure...
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    Dublin Housing Crises

    "Demand exceeds supply"
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    Are tax reliefs on pensions for higher earners too generous?

    I'm guessing it's a pretty small cohort who are actively trying to minimize returns for fear of hitting the cap. I _imagine_ savvy near-retirees would avoid the issue by reducing their contributions accordingly. OTOH speaking for myself as a 33yo, i'm much more likely to make high risk/return...
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    Are tax reliefs on pensions for higher earners too generous?

    Use-it-or-lose it is a powerful psychological spur. The date of a person's first contribution is a really powerful predictor of their eventual pot. Any marketing grad will tell you the most important moment is when the customer opens his wallet, even a by hair. To my mind, this would be a bug...
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    Dept of Finance Report: We are a welfare nation

    Means testing every welfare payment could add more administrative cost than it saves on payments. If we want to tax people with higher income, it's a lot simpler to tax their income rather than their income+pension+children+medical. In my ideal world, the highest tax band would be something...
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    Government to ban oil and gas exploration

    I'm assuming that the price of hydrocarbons never drops to 0. I'm assuming that humanity will consume most big hydrocarbon deposits in the world, sooner or later. I'm assuming that extraction technology will continue to become cleaner and more efficient. In that case, even if we set aside all...
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    Stock market correction or bear market/crash? Either way I bailed.

    Can you elaborate? Unless this capital reserve was a secret, then it's value would have been priced into the company's pre-dividend share price, no?
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    Lets try to increase the 'prizes' in prize bonds......

    You seem to be assuming that a truly random distribution of wins among prize bonds would result in each prize bond delivering an about-average return. That's only true over an infinite time scale. True randomness tends to result in distributions where we pattern-hunting-animals perceive...
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    Huge Bill From Three.ie

    Don't these debts get resold to collection agencies? They (almost certainly) wouldn't have any legal mechanism to enforce it, but that never seems to stop them making life difficult for their "targets".
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    Website designer - poor work

    You were right in giving him the sack. A project this size shouldn't take more than a week's work, and shouldn't take more than a calendar month start-to-finish. I'm not sure you can find a competent and established web developer to take on a job this small. Anybody with a respectable track...
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    Family Car -Suv or others Recommended

    I'd love to talk you out of an suv altogether. A 30kg child is not a good reason to put a car on stilts and haul around another 500kg of steel. You don't need the space: children aren't that big, but their stuff sprawls to occupy all available space, regardless of how big that space is. They...
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    Effect of rent controls? Higher rents and reduced supply

    Two of the country's biggest turkeys warned the minster against introducing Christmas. While their argument was (at least with the benefit of hindsight) correct, these are not the most credible people to be delivering such a warning.
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    Boxer Moran's "Keeping People in their Homes Bill"

    "the extent to which an order under this section will impact the future aspirations and opportunities of all members of the household" What if my aspiration is to keep a property without paying for it?
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    Money left to first cousins, what if some are deceased?

    It's worth noting that "I'm a stranger who might have money for you" is a the most common way to start a 419 scam. Check their bona-fides carefully before handing over any personal data or money.
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    Are Fuel Oil Additives Genuine ?

    Humbug. Big oil might be the most efficient industrial process in human history. If a petrochemical lab found some real magic beans, wouldn't they be bought up instantly for billions? So why is this stuff all being sold by cottage-industry brands rather than added at the pump by shell?
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