Government €1m boost for Irish big data centre
The Irish Government target data analysis sector for job growth with CeADAR funding
One million euro will be invested in an Irish data analytics centre for researching “big data”, a key area of the government’s job growth plans, Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton announced today.
The Centre for Applied Data Analytics Research, CeADAR, will carry out research into challenges in the sector at University College Dublin and will work in partnership withUniversity College Cork and Dublin Institute of Technology.
Data analytics focuses on converting large amounts of raw data into valuable information through the use of statistical analysis and advanced software.
CeDAR’s focus will centre on developing ways of generating business, profit and ultimately jobs from the high-growth area.
Multinational and Irish companies, including eBay, Accenture, Dell, Fidelity Investments, Adaptive Mobile, and HP will set the research agenda at the centre.
The data analytics sector is growing at 40 per cent per annum worldwide and is targeted for jobs growth as part of the government’s Action Plan for Jobs 2013.
Making the announcement today, Mr Bruton said, “A key part of this Government’s plan for growth and jobs is identifying areas where we believe Ireland has distinct advantages compared to other countries, and taking steps necessary to ensure that we realise our potential for employment in those areas.
“Establishing an industry-led technology centre in this sector will ensure that the major research strengths we have built up over the past decade are directed firmly towards viable business ideas and ultimately jobs.”
Primate of Armagh Cardinal Brady to invite Pope Francis to Ireland
The primate of All Ireland, Sean Brady today said he would be inviting Pope Francis to Ireland and described his election as “an historic event for many reasons”.
The papacy has gone across the Atlantic to the New World for the first time,” he said. “Pope Francis, a big statement in itself. First time a Jesuit”.
He also said that he would be inviting the new pope to visit Ireland.
Speaking at the Irish College in Rome after the surprise election of Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, described events in the conclave as the fifth ballot was counted just before 7pm last night. “It was very moving as the votes were being counted and the names resounding out, Bergoglio, Bergoglio, and suddenly the magic number was reached and there was applause,” he revealed.
It was the first conclave in which Cardinal Brady had participated, and he described it was a “fantastic, very moving day”.
After Cardinal Bergoglio accepted the result of the vote, each Cardinal greeted him in turn. “I went up and said, “I bring you the love and the love and the prayers and the affection of the Irish people, there have been historic links between Ireland and Argentina, and he said ‘I want to ask for your continued prayers and I send you my blessing’”.
He said that he was initially “surprised when the 76-year old prelate from Buenos Aires emerged as a favourite. “Really I was, but then not surprised when I reflected up in it, because after the days of discussion, it emerged in conclave that this was what the Holy Spirit was directing us towards. I wasn’t even sure that we’d have a conclusion yesterday, but we did”.
Asked if the new pope will tackle the problem of cleaning up the Curia which has been riven by scandals such as the Wikileaks controversy, he said, “We certainly heard a lot about the Curia last week. He’ll have to speak for himself, but certainly a man who has lived in a country which has had its ups and downs politically and economically over the last twenty years, I would be confident that he will”.
The kidnap mystery grows as developer Kevin McGeever is arrested & later released without charge
A Mayo businessman who claimed he was abducted and held captive for eight months last year has been released from Garda custody.
Kevin McGeever (69), who had been arrested and questioned for 24 hours, did not speak to reporters as he left the Gort Garda station at 9.15pm. He wore a woollen cap pulled down over his head, and was driven away by a man in a Kerry-registered car.
The former tycoon was detained yesterday under Section Four of the Criminal Justice Act 1994, which contains provisions for wasting Garda time and making false allegations.
He was brought to Gort Garda station in Co Galway where he is currently being held. He can be detained for up to 24 hours. He was visited by a solicitor at the Garda station last night.
A senior Garda source said: “Gardai have exhausted every line of inquiry in relation to his mysterious case and found no evidence of a threat or a ransom demand. The fact he has been arrested (on suspicion of) wasting Garda time speaks for itself.”
A Garda spokesman confirmed that a man had been arrested in relation to the ongoing investigation into Mr McGeever’s alleged abduction yesterday.
“An investigation is continuing into the alleged abduction of a male. As part of that investigation a male was arrested this morning in the Galway area.”
Members of his immediate family have claimed they were not aware of his arrest.
Earlier this morning, his brother, Bernard’s wife told the Irish Independent: “This is the first I heard of it. We knew nothing about this and my husband is in Dublin.”
Mr McGreever was visited by his solicitor last night, who remained at the Garda station for about one hour.
He returned there earlier this morning where he spent a further 20 minutes.
The station where he is being held is the same one where a missing person’s report was filed for Mr McGeever by his partner Siobhan O’Callaghan last June, a month after he had disappeared.
Eight months later, the Mayo-born businessman was found wandering barefoot on a road near the Cavan-Leitrim border on January 29 of this year. He was in an emaciated state, disorientated and had a long beard.
He was hospitalised at the Midlands Regional Hospital in Mullingar where he was treated for malnutrition.
He told gardai he had been abducted from the garden of his €3m Craughwell home ‘Nirvana’ at gunpoint by a number of masked men on May 27 last year.
He claimed to have been held by kidnappers for a ransom.
However, he was unable to supply any details about his captivity or on his abductors.
He was also unable to shed any light on why he may have been kidnapped.
The former businessman had been recovering from his ordeal at a retreat in the midlands following his release from hospital on February 11.
Gardai interviewed Mr McGeever on a number of occasions both while he was in hospital and since his release. However, concerns remained about certain aspects of his story. Officers in Gort were in charge of the ongoing investigation.
CCTV footage from the area where he was found was examined and Gardai put out an appeal for information on a number of vehicles that may have been in the area at the time.
Mr McGeever sold residential and commercial property through his Mullingar-based firm KMM International Properties. However, he was the subject of investigations by the FBI, Interpol and police in Dubai, where he was involved in a lot of property deals.
He had twice been sought by international police forces in the past in connection with major fraud investigations and his name has featured on Interpol watch lists for much of the past decade.
Last month, the Irish Independent revealed that the luxury mansion where Mr McGeever lived before he went missing is owned by a mystery company with no obvious links to the developer.
Mr McGeever spoke publicly about his ordeal earlier this month to say that he wished to “put the record straight” about misleading information that had been emerged about him.
He said he was looking forward to dispelling allegations about the circumstances of his past business dealings and about his abduction.
However, he said he was still in recovery and was too weak to comment at present. He claimed to be suffering from ‘change-of-food syndrome’.
The businessman started his career in the construction industry in his native Mayo. His siblings continue to live in the county but Mr McGeever had become an infrequent visitor to his home town.
It’s St. Paddy’s Day, Not ‘St. Patty’s Day’
Every year on March 17, the people of the world congratulate Alec Baldwin’s 17-year-old daughter Ireland on her new modeling contract by celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. Unfortunately, in their attempts to observe St. Paddy’s day, many people accidentally observe “St. Patty’s Day.”
“Patty” is a woman’s name. The nickname used for a man named Patrick, for example, the man named Patrick who is credited with converting great swaths of Ireland to Christianity, is “Paddy,” from the Irish Padraig.
Calling St. Patrick’s Day “St. Patty’s Day” is like referring to Christmas Eve as “Christie’s Eve” or Hanukkah as “Helen’s Festival of Lights.”
HOW DID PADRAIG BECOME PATTY?
Just as the process that transforms shamrocks into McFlurries is murky, so is it unclear exactly where or when Padraig’s feast day became Patty’s tea party. The confusion obviously has something to do with the fact that the Irish name Padraig is Anglicized Patrick. But the English nickname is “Pat,” not “Paddy.”
“Patty” is probably an American thing, like a McDonald’s hamburger patty.
ISN’T “PADDY” A SLUR?
While it’s true that “paddy” came into fashion as a slur against Irish people in the 19th century, it’s also true that Paddy is just a regular old name still in use today. You’ll have to go by intent on this one. Calling a person “a paddy” because he’s Irish is offensive. Calling a person “Paddy” because his name is Paddy, is not. Calling St. Patrick “Paddy” might upset some people since he’s a canonized saint and not just some guy you know.
If someone gets rankled by your use of “St. Paddy,” revert back to “St. Patrick,” which is more correct, not “St. Patty,” which is less. (And don’t get into a big fight on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s a happy day.)
I STILL WANT TO CELEBRATE ST. PATTY’S DAY
That’s great. You can do that too. Saint Patricia was born into a noble, possibly royal family (some sources describe her as the niece or granddaughter of Constantine the Great) in Constantinople (now Istanbul). When Patricia—”Patty,” to you—was a teenager, she fled to Rome to become a Bride of Christ (nun). Later, she left for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Along the way, her ship was caught in a storm and she and her party were shipwrecked on a tiny island near Naples, where she established a chichi prayer community. She fell ill and died at age 21.
According to legend, over 500 years later, a knight paying his respects to Trish’s remains decided he wanted a souvenir and plucked out one of her teeth, because obviously. Miraculously, blood started pouring out of the long-dead cavity—blood that nuns preserved in two glass vials. Today that blood is display at the San Gregorio Armeno Church in Naples, where it is said to turn back liquid every Tuesday morning at around 9:30 and every August 25th (Patricia’s feast day).
All of which is to say: Celebrate St. Patty’s Day on August 25th.
NO, I MEAN I JUST WANT TO CALL ST. PATRICK’S DAY “ST. PATTY’S DAY”
Well then you are just being willfully wrong. We have offered you knowledge and you have taken it, examined it, and deliberately rejected it. Cast it out like so many snakes from Ireland. (By the way: Ireland never had snakes. The “snakes” St. Patrick banished were probably the ones used in pagan symbolism, after he converted the druids to Christianity.)
If you’re American, the words are even pronounced in the same way. We’re just asking that you adopt the correct spelling, which, incidentally, is already phonetic.
SO WHAT CAN I CALL IT?
You can call it “St. Patrick’s Day.” You can call it “St. Paddy’s Day.” You can call it “St. Pat’s.” You can call it “Maewyn Succat’s Day” (after Saint Patrick’s birthname). You can call it “March 17th.” You can even call it “Liberalia,” an ancient Roman holiday also celebrated on March 17 is probably much closer to modern American St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in spirit. (A procession of people carried a giant penis through the countryside, and everyone sang dirty songs and left food everywhere.)
Don’t call it ”St. Patty’s Day”.
Over 3,000 episodes of physical restraint in Irish mental health centres for 2011
A new report said there has been a year-on-year increase in the use of physical restraint.
A new report on mental health centres in Ireland has revealed that a total of 3,056 episodes of physical restraint were reported in 2011. The report by the Mental health commission said this figure represents an increase of 71 compared to the number recorded in 2010,
Overall use of restrictive practices in 2011 were down by almost 12 per cent on the previous year and the the use of seclusion and mechanical means of bodily restraint has also steadily declined since 2008.
However the report said there has been a year-on-year increase in the use of physical restraint.
Seclusion accounted for 35.5 per cent of all restrictive interventions reported to the Commission in 2011 with 1,683 episodes reported. Less than half, 47.1 per cent, of approved centres (32/68) indicated that they used seclusion in 2011 and the remainder (36) reported that they did not use seclusion at all.
Dublin North Central and Dublin North West had the highest rate of seclusion followed closely by Waterford/Wexford.
For the fourth year, St Joseph’s Intellectual Disability Services at St Ita’s Hospital in North Dublin recorded the highest number of episodes of seclusion. They reported 369 episodes of seclusion in 2011, a notable decrease on use reported in 2010 when there were 711 episodes of seclusion in this approved centre.
Two dedicated child and adolescent approved centres, the Adolescent In-patient Unit, St Vincent’s Hospital and the Child & Adolescent Mental Health In-patient Unit, Merlin Park University Hospital, reported that they used seclusion in 2011.
As in previous years, the percentage of males secluded were greater than that of females at over 60 per cent.
The majority 51.6 per cent of seclusion episodes lasted for four hours or less and three-quarters (75.2 per cent) lasted for eight hours or less. In 16 per cent of episodes, seclusion lasted between eight and 24 hours and in a further 6.9 per cent of episodes it lasted between 24 and 72 hours.
Only three approved centres reported using mechanical restraint while over three quarters recorded episodes of physical restraint.
St Joseph’s Intellectual Disability Services in St Ita’s Hospital recorded the highest number of physical restraint episodes of all approved centres in 2011. This intervention was used 366 times in 2011, which was considerably less than their use of physical restraint in 2010 when they reported 616 episodes.
All dedicated child and adolescent approved centres (5) reported using physical restraint, usage was up from 100 episodes in 2010 to 214 episodes in 2011.
In 2011, 90.5 per cent of physical restraint episodes lasted for 15 minutes or less and 7.9 per cent of episodes lasted for between 16 and 30 minutes. Fifty one episodes (1.7 per cent) lasted for more than 30 minutes, of which ten (0.3 per cent) lasted for more than one hour. In 2010, four episodes lasted for longer than one hour.
Commenting on the publication of the report today, John Saunders, Chairman of the Mental Health Commission said it is the watchdog’s view that “the use of seclusion and restraint are not standard interventions but emergency measures which should be used in rare and exceptional circumstances and only in the best interests of the patient when the patient poses an immediate threat of serious harm to self or others”.
“Our aim is to encourage approved centres to focus on preventative measures that eliminate or minimise the use of restrictive interventions,” he said. “To that end the Commission has during 2012 completed a consultation exercise on a seclusion and physical restraint reduction strategy,” he added.
The strategy is expected to be published during 2013 and it will be implemented nationwide.
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