‘And now’ Minister Hogan wants Irish householders to register their septic tanks at €5 a go
The Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan has stated that septic tanks can be registered for €5 for the next three months but inspections will not commence until next year.
Mr Hogan told the Oireachtas environment committee there was no doubt remediation work on some systems would be necessary, but he could not make any commitments in relation to potential grant assistance. “As inspections will not commence until next year and as it is not possible to predict the future, it is not possible for me to make any commitments in relation to potential grant assistance for owners whose systems might be found to require remediation.”
Mr Hogan stressed that any grant scheme he might introduce would have to take “budgetary constraints” into consideration, as well as the financial circumstances of the households concerned.
He said an information campaign would inform householders on registering their systems before the February 1st, 2013, deadline.
The maximum registration fee payable under the Water Services Amendment Act 2012 will be €50, but Mr Hogan previously said a reduced amount of €5 would apply until September 28th of this year.
“I would encourage all owners of properties connected to domestic waste water treatment systems to take advantage of the reduced fee,” he said.
The meeting was heated at times. Independent TD Mattie McGrath said everyone was in favour of compliance, but there had been “deliberate confusion and blackguarding of the public”.
When Mr McGrath claimed “lies were told”, committee chairman Ciarán Lynch of Labour urged him to be “more temperate”. Mr McGrath then complained of “total dissimulation”, and left the committee room after being asked to do so by Mr Lynch.
‘Will he’ ‘Wont she’?
The handshake that the world wants to see
IS THE LATEST STEP ON THE NORTHERN IRELAND PEACE PROCESS
For Martin McGuinness, shaking Queen Elizabeth II’s hand will be the biggest single step yet on his road from feared paramilitary commander to politician.
It’s a transformation that has taken place over decades: From the shaggy haired, scrawny commander of Irish Republican Army (IRA) gunmen in the early 1970s, to the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government, where he represents the province’s most popular Catholic party.
In his home city of Londonderry I saw that fear firsthand while shooting a documentary about him a little over a decade ago.
McGuinness had long been rumored to have had a direct hand in the killing of an IRA man turned informer. I visited the man’s mother, who lived just a few streets away from McGuinness’s modest terraced house in the city’s notorious Bay Side neighborhood. The killing had allegedly taken place decades earlier but the man’s mother was still too afraid to talk.
Derry, as he would call his city, or Londonderry, as the province’s Protestants refer to it, was where McGuinness first tried his hand at politics.
While shooting a documentary we met with one of his former political colleagues who also was a secret agent for the British government. He had been pulled out and relocated to mainland Britain when his cover was blown a long time ago, but he told me he warned his British government handlers that McGuinness’s early ballot box victories were a fraud: Countless ballots cast in clear infringement of the law.
He says his handlers turned a blind eye, and he concluded even at that early stage, 10 years after violence broke out, that British government officials had calculated McGuinness was someone they wanted in a suit and tie at the table talking to them, and not on the streets waging war.
As we concluded that documentary, I struggled to balance all I had seen with the question, is this transition reversible? Is McGuinness committed to peace? Back then, the IRA had still not decommissioned its weapons, and the door seemed open to a return to violence.
Later McGuinness’s Sinn Fein colleagues told me I’d set him up for assassination as a leader who’d used back channels to secretly negotiate peace with the British government. I was told “we expected something more like Nelson Mandela,” but that was a leap of faith I didn’t have the evidence to take.
Dislike for McGuinness is not limited to those on the opposite side of the sectarian divide. His readiness to make peace with the British — never mind shake the queen’s hand — has made him some powerful enemies in his own community.
When McGuinness and the IRA gave up their guns, even more extreme republicans picked up where they left off. The Real IRA has continued, its hard core of supporters making bombs and killing policemen.
In the Derry streets where McGuinness still lives, violent vigilante gangs mete out their own informal justice on the community, shooting drug pushers. They boast more arms than the IRA ever had, and have filled the void left as McGuinness and the social order the IRA enforced fade into the past.
Meeting the queen means McGuinness loses the legitimacy of hardcore Republicans — he can no longer sway them as he once did. So while he’ll still call for the British government to investigate its own actions of brutality, collusion with Protestant paramilitaries and the alleged shoot-to-kill policy of IRA volunteers, his calls will ring hollow for some.
But all along, McGuinness’s every move, from IRA commander, to deputy first minister, seems to have been an ever more calculated step.
The vast majority of Catholics — and everyone else in Northern Ireland, for that matter — only ever wanted a fair deal, peace, jobs and a good education for their children. McGuinness seems to have read that well.
An IRA military victory over “Queen and Country” was never really an option. It was a dream whose time came and went riding on the back of bigotry, sectarian violence, social injustice and the civil rights movement of the late 1960s.
The London-backed, Protestant-dominated governments in Belfast had long run roughshod over Catholic aspirations.
In a handshake, McGuinness will banish that to the history books for ever. An acknowledgment sealed in a formality that the violent divided past should be laid to rest.
For a man of peace — which is how McGuinness wants to be remembered — he has come a long way, and so have the Catholics of Ireland.
The Irish Government approves the draft car smoking ban laws
The Irish Government has approved the drafting of new laws to ban smoking in cars where children are present.
Minister for Health James Reilly was given the go-ahead to draw up amendments to a Seanad Private Members Bill on the issue.
The Bill, introduced by Senators John Crown, Jillian van Turnhout and Mark Daly, advocated a ban on all smoking in cars when children are in the vehicle.
Irish Hospitals will shut if they
‘fail to meet expected new standards’
Minister for Health James Reilly stressed the importance of adhering to the new standards in healthcare
Our hospital will be shut down if they fail to meet new standards of healthcare, Minister for Health James Reilly has warned.
The new standards which follow critical reports on Ennis hospital in 2009, Mallow hospital in 2011 and Tallaght hospital last year, come into effect immediately.
Launching National Standards for Safer Better Healthcare for the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) yesterday, Dr Reilly said failure by any hospital to meet the standards would result in it being closed “down the line”.
The new standards apply to all healthcare services provided by or on behalf of the Health Service Executive with the exception of mental health services.
Services covered include hospital care, ambulance services, community care and primary care.
Likening the new system to the work of health inspectors, Dr Reilly said “a lot of people have remarked on the fact that you can be in the middle of a meal in a restaurant and a health inspector can come in and take the meal from in front of you and say ‘I am closing this place, it is not safe’.”
“Yet we know in the past there has been very unsafe practices and very unsafe conditions in some of our hospitals.
“That has to be addressed, and people have to take it seriously,” he warned.
Dr Reilly said the standards were the precursor to a new licensing system for all hospitals which would come later in the year.
However, he said the new standards were now law. They were “mandated from today, from this moment on”.
Some 45 separate standards have been developed to cover patient safety and wellbeing, hospital leadership, governance and management, and use of resources and provision of information among others.
According to the authority, the move is designed to place patients at the heart of the care process, with a major focus on dignity, respect, efficiency and safety.
The authority said patients may have a clear expectation of the standard of care they can expect to receive. The authority also said service providers would be clear on what is expected of them.
Speaking at the announcement of the standards, chief executive Dr Tracey Cooper said the authority had found that “strong leadership, governance and management are essential for the delivery of safe care for patients”.
She said “effective leadership and clear accountability, responsibility, planning and management throughout each service” were now among the requirements for hospitals.
She described the standards as “a vision for safer, better healthcare in Ireland”.
The standards were produced following a consultation process conducted by the authority in which more than 200 submissions were received from members of the public and from interested parties.
NATIONAL STANDARDS PATIENT-DRIVEN AGENDA
THE NEW standards are designed to place patients at the heart of the care process, with a focus on dignity, respect, efficiency and safety, according to the Health Information and Quality Authority.
The 45 standards are grouped into eight “themes” covering the following areas:
“Person-centred” care and support;
Effective care and support;
Safe care and support;
Better health and wellbeing;
Leadership, governance and management;
Workforce standards;
Use of resources;
Use of information.
The full range of standards, along with an explanatory guide and a short video, are available on hiqa.ieor.
Heart disease to rise 25% by 2020
‘An Irish study states’
The number of adults with coronary heart disease is expected to rise by a quarter during this decade, a report has said.
By 2020 132,000 people are expected to have angina or a heart attack, researchers added.
Heart disease remains one of the main killers in Northern Ireland despite huge improvements in its treatment over many years, the Public Health Agency said.
Dr Christine McMaster, public health consultant at the agency, warned: “We clearly have to do more to prevent and treat it so that people here have a better chance to remain healthy and live independently in their communities as they grow up and old.”
In 2010 it was estimated that more than 107,000 adults had been diagnosed with coronary heart disease.
Other key findings of the research include that diagnosed heart disease is more common among older people, with almost a quarter of pensioners affected in 2010. Rates of diagnosis are higher among men than women.
By 2020 the number of diagnosed adults is expected to rise to almost 132,000, a 23% increase over ten years from 2010. Researchers said the implications could be even greater than the statistics suggested because they did not include people with undiagnosed heart disease.
Dr McMaster added: “Heart disease remains one of the main killers in Northern Ireland and this is despite huge improvements in its treatment over many years.”
She said other government departments needed to play their part in creating healthier and safer environments for people.
The research was conducted by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland in collaboration with the Centre of Excellence for Public Health Northern Ireland at Queen’s University Belfast and Health Research Board Centre for Diet and Health Research at University College Cork. It is based on the 2005/06 Northern Ireland Health and Social Wellbeing Survey.
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