Ireland’s Garda chief warns on more cuts to force down numbers
Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan has declared that he would not like to see the strength of his force drop below 13,000.
He is concerned that if the numbers continue to fall, it will take two years to build up the force again because of the training programme for recruits.
Mr Callinan admitted that he would “love” to see the recruitment embargo lifted.
He was outlining concerns at the impact of an ongoing drop in numbers on providing a professional policing service as he addressed the Oireachtas Justice Committee.
He pointed out that the Government had set a deadline of the end of the year for the force to reach 13,000. The current strength of the force was 13,472 and there would not be sufficient retirements to bring it down to the required level.
Mr Callinan said there were around 1,200 personnel, who were between 50 years – when they could retire after 30 years’ service – and the compulsory retirement age of 60.
But committee member and Fianna Fail justice spokesman Niall Collins called on Justice Minister Alan Shatter to lift the embargo and re-open recruit training at the Garda College in Templemore in the new year.
Mr Callinan said station closures were not a cost-cutting exercise. He said travelling gangs would not be tackled by keeping gardai in stations but by putting people on the streets.
Irish organised crime gangs OCG’s forging links with Russian underworld
Organised crime bosses who run 25 major gangs here are forging closer links with Russian mobsters in order to boost their profits.
The key gangs have now spread their tentacles to every county in the State, as well as building up their contacts overseas. They are already heavily involved with the Russians in importing drug and cigarette shipments.
The strength of the gangs and the threats they pose have been assessed by the gardai as part of a Europol initiative.
The review shows that five of the 25 outfits have “significant international cross-border connections”.
The majority of the groups, known as OCGs (Organised Crime Gangs), are centred in large urban areas, such as Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Galway and Sligo.
But senior gardai say there is a huge amount of interaction between the groups throughout the country and that they regularly take part in joint enterprises, including drug importations.
The number of OCGs has risen significantly from the last public garda assessment more than five years ago, when it was reckoned there were 18 of them operating here.
An insight into the workings of the main players in gangland was given to members of the Oireachtas Justice Committee yesterday by Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan.
He said those with connections on both sides of the Border were utilising both Northern Ireland and this jurisdiction as transit routes for trafficking in drugs and counterfeit cigarettes, as well as fuel laundering.
Mr Callinan said links between dissident republicans and OCGs continued to cause serious concern. A relationship of friction and facilitation appeared to exist between OCGs in this jurisdiction and some dissident elements. The problems arise, it is understood, from attempts by dissidents to extort money from drug dealers.
Mr Callinan said each of the gangs were structured hierarchically and typically consisted of a leadership, a number of middle managers and low-level criminals, who carry out the day-to-day running of the groups.
The commissioner said it was difficult to quantify the groups as they tended to merge, diversify and often have a cross-over of personnel for particular enterprises. But, generally, a gang would consist of an inner core of six to a dozen people, with an outer layer and then a network of family members or associates on the fringes.
Irish OCGs continue to forge and develop links to international criminal networks, with the Netherlands, Spain and the UK the favoured locations for foreign liaisons as they were established drug-transportation routes.
But garda intelligence has more recently noted growing links with Russian organised crime groups. The presence of Russian OCGs in Spain is said to be influencing the activities of Irish criminals there.
Targeted intelligence-led operations using the national specialist units and crime and security branch, in partnership with divisional and regional resources, are used to disrupt and dismantle the OCG networks, Mr Callinan said.
He pointed out that a number of the gangs were also engaged in residential and commercial burglaries, robberies and distraction theft.
Dissidents: Legislation introduced in July 2009 to tackle organised crime has resulted in 179 arrests. Six people have been charged with taking part in or contributing to gang activities and two with directing the activities of a criminal organisation.
The arrests have also resulted in charges for firearms offences, drug-trafficking, violent disorder, obtaining money with menaces, threats to kill, theft and aggravated burglary with firearms.
It was also revealed that drug seizures in the first nine months of this year exceeded the total for all of last year and have now topped €90m.
This year’s figures have been boosted by the capture of over 400 cannabis growhouses. The demand for heroin and cocaine has not waned significantly, he said, and heroin usage is increasing in some small pockets around the country.
Mr Callinan said Operation Stilts, which was put in place in June 2010 to tackle drug dealing along the boardwalks on the River Liffey in Dublin city centre, had resulted in the seizure of 250,000 prescription drugs, mainly bought through the internet, and over 14,500 illegal drugs.Gardai carried out searches of 10,000 people and brought over 2,500 suspects before the courts.
The commissioner defended the decision, taken by a senior officer, not to immediately intervene to take on those responsible for a paramilitary display, including firing a volley of shots, at the funeral of Real IRA faction leader Alan Ryan because of the danger of injuring neighbours and friends of the Ryan family, as well as children among the mourners.
He said huge efforts were being made to identify and charge those believed responsible for breaking the law and there was no question of “taking the foot off the pedal” in tackling dissident republicans.
Mr Callinan also indicated that considerable progress had been made in the cross-border inquiries into the murder of prison officer David Black and said this would be further advanced in the coming weeks.
Richard Bruton to make debt restructuring changes for Irish SME firms
Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton is to amend the Companies Act to allow small private companies to apply to the Circuit Court directly to have an examiner appointed.
New legislation proposed by the Government is set to make it easier for small businesses to restructure their debts.
Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton said he planned to amend the Companies Act to allow small private companies to apply to the Circuit Court directly to have an examiner appointed.
The move is intended to make it cheaper and easier for companies in difficulty to resolve their debt problems.
Small firms are classed as those with less than 50 employees, with a balance sheet not exceeding €4.4 million or turnover of less than €8.8 million. To qualify for the new measures, firms must satisfy two of the three conditions.
The changes will be made in the upcoming Companies Bill, which is to be published before the end of the year. It is expected to be enacted by the Oireachtas soon after its publication.
Mr Bruton said the Government recognised that there are many viable small enterprises in the sector that employed large numbers of people and had the potential to employ many more, but were facing “significant difficulties” because of legacy debts.
“That is why we committed to putting in place better structures to enable these businesses to more easily restructure their debts, while giving proper consideration to other businesses and individuals owed money by them,” he said.
“This will mean that more businesses will survive their current difficulties, meaning crucially that more jobs will be saved and more jobs will be created in this hugely important part of the economy.”
Small businesses account for about one third of people in the Irish workforce. In its action plan for jobs, the Government identified a number of areas where the sector could be supported, including new funding sources and a credit guarantee scheme.
Babies yawn in womb is help to development of brain
Spending six months in the womb is enough to make a foetus yawn, as this image from an ultrasound scan shows.
But rather than being a sign of tiredness or boredom, scientists believe that yawning could help trigger the development of the foetus’s brain.
Making the complex muscle movement could send nerve impulses into the brain, helping to program it for normal functioning, researchers said.
Images of foetuses apparently yawning have provoked debate among some scientists, with some claiming the developing babies were simply opening their mouths.
But now Durham University researchers claim to have resolved the debate after scanning 15 healthy foetuses four times between 24 and 36 weeks’ gestation.
By timing how long the mouth spent opening to its widest point, compared with how long it spent closing, they were able to distinguish between a yawn and a simple mouth opening.
The yawning rate – when it took the foetus significantly longer to open its mouth than to close it – was more than double the simple mouth opening rate, they reported in the Public Library of Science ONE journal.
Yawning is known to be “contagious” among adults, but the tendency to follow someone else in yawning does not develop in children until the age of five and cannot be present in foetuses which are still in the womb.
Previous studies have suggested that there is a “U-shaped” developmental progression in yawning, because premature babies yawn more than those born on term, but primary schoolchildren yawn more than kindergarteners.
The new paper appears to support this theory, demonstrating that yawning episodes among foetuses decreased from an average of two an hour at 24 weeks’ gestation to none by 36 weeks.
Dr Nadja Reissland, who led the study, said the results “seem to suggest that yawning and simple mouth opening have this maturational function early in gestation”.
“The yawn itself might target certain parts of the brain to develop. As an adult you might yawn because your brain is telling you are tired, but here it is the other way around, the yawn is triggering the brain maturation,” she explained.
“[Next] I would like to look at compromised foetuses, for example foetuses that have been exposed to drugs in the womb or which have some sort of genetic defects, and see if they yawn in a different way or at a different time. Then you could use it as an indicator for doctors to have a look at – it could be a measure of healthy development.”
Lonesome George ‘wasn’t lonely after all’
When Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island giant tortoise, died in June in the Galapagos, the world mourned the demise of a species. It appears, however, that George was not that lonely after all.
There are at least 17 tortoises on the Galapagos Islands that have similar genetic traits to George, including some that may be from his same genus, the Galapagos National Park said in a statement.
George’s June 24 death “does not represent the end of the Chelonoidis abingdonii species of Pinta Island giant tortoises,” the statement said.
The Galapagos, located some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) off Ecuador’s coast, is an archipelago of 13 islands and more than 100 rocks and micro-islands. The islands were uninhabited when Europeans first visited in the 16th century, and today has a population of around 25,000.
Lonesome George, who was believed to be 100 years old when he died, was discovered on Pinta Island in 1972 at a time when tortoises of his type were believed to be extinct.
Research conducted with Yale University experts “identified nine females, three males and five youths with genes of the Pinta Island giant tortoise species,” the statement read.
Researchers analyzed more than 1,600 DNA samples taken in 2008 from tortoises living on the Wolf Volcano, on Isabella Island, to George’s DNA and samples taken from the Pinta tortoise museum.
The results means that there could be “additional hybrids on the Wolf Volcano, and even individuals on Pinta that could be pure,” the statement read.
Experts estimate there were once some 300,000 giant tortoises on the remote Pacific archipelago, but the species was decimated by whalers and pirates in the 18th and 19th century, who took them aboard their ships as fresh food and introduced new predators.
Today there are about between 30,000 and 40,000 tortoises of 10 different species on the Galapagos.
The Pinta and Floreana island tortoise, and other hybrids, were probably taken to Isabella Island in the 18th century by sailors who threw them overboard when they no longer needed the animals as food, the statement read.
Park authorities have known since 2008 of the existence of hybrids with Pinta Island tortoise genes, but National Park biologist Washington Tapia said in June that he believed there were not enough to bring back Lonesome George’s species.
A more complete report on the find will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Biological Conservation.
The Galapagos became famous when Charles Darwin visited in 1835 to conduct landmark research that led to his revolutionary theories on evolution.
The archipelago has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1978 for the unique plant and animal life found both on its land and in the surrounding sea.
In 2007, the organization declared the island chain’s environment endangered due to the increase in tourism and the introduction of invasive species.
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