Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Taoiseach Kenny pledges to introduce tax reform plan in our next Budget

  The Government has indicated that the top rate of tax (52%) is to be reduced from October’s Budget onwards, with the saving aimed at benefiting low- and middle-income earners.

The coalition is also pledging to return Ireland to a level of full employment by 2020 – replacing all the jobs lost during the crisis. Fine Gael and Labour’s new ‘Statement of Government Priorities’ also commits to the full retention of the Free Travel Scheme. Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the reduction of the top rate of tax – which is unsustainable – will be achieved over a number of Budgets.

“What we want to do is to announce a tax reform plan in the forthcoming Budget that will extend over a number of years,” Mr Kenny said. “It is about shifting the burden of tax away from low- and middle-income families, about supporting work, about the value of entrepreneurship, and ensuring that work always pays.

” The Taoiseach earlier outlined a series of dramatic changes to the top ministerial ranks for the final 18 months of the partnership with the big winners including Leo Varadkar as the new Health Minister. The raft of changes in the top ranks of Fine Gael and Labour took place after tough talking between Mr Kenny and the new Labour leader,  Tánaiste and Social Protection Minister Joan Burton over the last week.

The Government is also planning to establish a Low Pay Commission – to make recommendations about the minimum wage. Access to subsidised childcare and afterschool places is to be increased – by extending eligibility. The new Tánaiste Ms Burton says there will also be a €100 increase in the Household Benefits Package in Budget 2015.

“People who are on the household benefits package will receive a quarterly payment of €25 towards the cost of water services,” she said. “That will extend to roughly €400,000 households.” In one of the most high profile promotions of today’s reshuffle Mr Varadkar, a qualified doctor, moves from transport, tourism and sport, to succeed Dr James Reilly in the Department of Health.

The former health minister, a close ally of the Taoiseach, moves to a new role in the junior ranks but combining the important divisions of children and public health. Charlie Flanagan, also a Kenny ally, has been promoted to Minister for Foreign Affairs. Simon Coveney, widely seen as a rising star in the Fine Gael ranks alongside Mr Varadkar, has been given the new responsibility of defence alongside his role as Agriculture Minister.

Jan O’Sullivan, formerly a junior minister, moves to head the Department of Education while the party’s recently-appointed deputy leader Alan Kelly is also promoted, taking up the role of Environment Minister. Mr Kelly replaces Fine Gael’s Phil Hogan, who stands down and is being put forward for a European Commissioner role.

The reshuffle sees the Labour old guard weeded out of cabinet. Ruairi Quinn had already confirmed his departure from the ministerial ranks on the back of Eamon Gilmore’s resignation as party leader and Tanaiste over the party’s decimation at the polls. Veteran former leader Pat Rabbitte has been demoted from his role at the helm of the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources to the backbenches.

Alex White, who put up an ultimately weak challenge to Ms Burton for the Labour leadership, takes that role. A new “super junior” ministerial position has also been created with Ged Nash, a Labour TD from Louth, entering the ministerial ranks.

Other key changes include Paschal Donohoe’s promotion as Minister for Transport and newcomer to the Dail in the 2011 election, TD for Cavan-Monaghan, Heather Humphreys rising quickly through the ranks to head up the Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht. Her predecessor Jimmy Deenihan is demoted but given a new junior role spanning the Department of the Taoiseach and Foreign Affairs with responsibility for issues related to the Irish diaspora.

New Bishop asks Elphin parishioners in Sligo to find men for priesthood

 

Dr Kevin Doran ordained by his predecessor Bishop Christopher Jones in Sligo Cathedral 

The Bishop of Elphin: “Will you find one suitable candidate for priesthood in each deanery between now and Easter and invite him to contact me or one of the members of the vocations team.

” The newly ordained Bishop of Elphin Dr Kevin Doran yesterday challenged parishioners to help address the shortage of vocations by identifying six suitable candidates for the priesthood from among their own families and communities between now and Easter. “Will you find one suitable candidate for priesthood in each deanery between now and Easter and invite him to contact me or one of the members of the vocations team,” he said.

Bishop Doran (61) was ordained by his predecessor Bishop Christopher Jones at a ceremony attended by more than 1,000 people at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Sligo.

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

Speaking to journalists before the ceremony, Bishop Doran repeated his view that legislation to allow same-sex marriage would undermine traditional marriage. Asked whether he anticipated a collision between Church and State on this issue, he said he hoped there would not be, but common sense suggested “we will not agree on everything”.

Bishop Doran said he had not heard Pope Francis’s comments about the possibility of finding a solution for the celibacy issue. He said, “I have great confidence in Pope Francis and his intuitive sense of the need to address issues.” He added that the Pope had indicated a willingness to address difficult issues and “does not beat around the bush”.

Bishop Doran told the congregation the Pope had asked him to give special care to the marginalised, “to the poor, to those who are in prison and to those who are sick”. He said he would like to make caring for those on the margins a hallmark of the diocese. He said Elphin had received a very positive report from the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.

“This is good news but of course we need to remain alert to the risks, which are, sadly, part of our social reality today,” the Bishop added. The two-hour ceremony was streamed live online. About Bishop Doran Bishop Dolan came to national attention last year when he resigned from the board of the Mater hospital after the Catholic-run institution agreed to comply with the Government’s abortion legislation. At the time he said: “I can’t reconcile my own conscience personally with the statement, largely because I feel a Catholic hospital has to bear witness… to Gospel values alongside providing excellent care.

” The former administrator of the Sacred Heart parish in Donnybrook was born in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, in June 1953 to Joseph Doran and Marie Brady, who both died in 2002. He has two sisters, Colette and Patricia. Ordained in 1977, he was chaplain at UCD from 1983 to 1990 and spiritual director at the Irish College in Rome from 1990 to 1995. He returned to Dublin as curate in Foxrock as well as a lecturer at the Mater Dei Institute in philosophy and Catholic social teaching. From 2000 to 2006 he was national co-ordinator for diocesan vocations and lectured at the Milltown Institute in Dublin.

He was parish priest at Glendalough from 2005 to 2009 and he was appointed in 2008 as secretary general of the International Eucharistic Congress which took place in Dublin in 2012. Last year he was appointed administrator in Donnybrook parish. From 1996 to 2011 he was a member of the Bishops’ Committee for Bioethics. Between 2001 and 2013 he was on the board of governors at Dublin’s Mater hospital and also on its board board of directors.

Teenagers share first kiss when Chloe gives Zack mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after he collapses

ZACH SELBY AND HIS GIRLFRIEND CHLOE TONES

    Zach Selby, 19, and Chloe Tones, 16, planned a romantic camping trip to celebrate the first day of their relationship together last Sunday. 

A teenage girl saved her boyfriend’s life on their first date by giving him the kiss of life when he suffered a heart attack. Zach Selby, 19, and Chloe Tones, 16, went on a romantic camping trip to celebrate the first day of their relationship. But the young couple’s first kiss ended up being the kiss of life after Zach collapsed suddenly with chest pains.

Chloe performed the life-saving mouth-to mouth resuscitation for 40 minutes until paramedics arrived. Zach, who is now recovering from his ordeal at home, said: “If it wasn’t for my girlfriend I wouldn’t be here right now and would never have seen my family again. “I will never forget it.

I can’t believe how close I came to dying. “She was amazing, she saved my life on our very first day as a couple – I don’t know how I will ever pay her back. “It really makes you appreciate things, especially us. She’s saved my life so I can spend it with her.” Chloe added: “When I was giving him mouth to mouth his eyes were open. He was just staring up at me from lifeless eyes, it was terrifying.

“I can’t believe that was our first kiss” . I just thought to myself, if I stop he’s not going to be able to live. I knew I had to keep going. It was awful. “It’s had a big impact on us, we’ve got a really strong bond now because I saved his life. “I can never forget that night, and it just brought us so close together.”

 Zach Selby pictured whilst he was in his hospital bed.

The apprentice hairdresser Zach and beauty student Chloe went camping with friends in Woolsthorpe-by-Colesterworth, Lincs., on Sunday. After enjoying a few drinks together Zach went for a walk alone to a nearby bench. At around 3.15am he suffered horrific chest pains and was found by Chloe collapsed on the floor. She said:

“I noticed this flashing light in the ground and then realised it was his phone. “That made me worried and I looked around and realised there was the outline of a body next to it. “He was floppy. I tried to get him up and shook him but there was nothing. “I looked closer and it was Zach, lying face down in the grass. “I picked him up and he woke up again so I sat him on a bench and he told me about the sharp pains in his chest. “But then he just collapsed, he wasn’t breathing either.

” Chloe, who has no medical training, dialled 999 and was given instructions on how to perform CPR.”  She and her friends were also told to use a nearby public access defibrillator to shock Zach back to life. Chloe said: “I told him he’d stop breathing and I had to check his pulse, and it was really fast. “He told me to do CPR, which I have never done before. He had to talk me through doing everything. “This was for 40 minutes until the ambulance got there – he kept waking up and gagging again.” Zach Selby and his girlfriend Chloe Tones, pictured whilst he was in his hospital bed.

Paramedics finally arrived and raced Zach to Grantham Hospital over 40 miles away from the campsite. Chloe stayed at Zach’s side by his hospital bed throughout the terrifying ordeal. Her mum Claire Tones, 38, added: “She’s amazing. I’m the proudest mum on the planet. “I’m very, very pleased that it didn’t come to the worse and Zach is still here.” Doctors still don’t know what caused Zach’s collapse and will fit a monitor to analyse his heart over the next two years. Because he was adopted aged three and knows nothing about his biological parents, a hereditary condition cannot be ruled out.

He was discharged after spending 48 hours in hospital and is now recovering at home in Grantham, Lincs. Zach and Chloe say their blossoming relationship is now stronger than ever and they have a special bond as a result of their ordeal. A spokesman for the East Midlands Ambulance Service said: “This is a great example of how members of the public can help save a life by learning first aid skills. “We are pleased we were able to play a key role in giving him the best possible chance of surviving his heart attack.”

Understanding our complex relationship with the great animal world

  

When buying a vegan sausages in a Brighton supermarket, I notice they were made in Cork and they are delicious too.

Tasty, healthy, and best of all, cruelty free, and also made in Ireland. Yet the word vegan tends to variously irritate, alienate and frighten people. I prefer plant-based — it’s less loaded. Anyway, I went plant based a year ago, and I can honestly say it is the best thing I have done since giving up smoking — the relief of stepping outside the cruelty loop is the same relief I felt when I managed to quit smoking after 24 years. Enormous and ongoing. And despite our meat-and-two-veg, milk-in-our-tea conditioning, it is easy.

Plant-based foods have come a long way from the crumbling dust of meat substitutes and the chalky horrors of bad soya milk — these days plant-based food is all about flavour, texture, creaminess, yumminess. The more the demand, the more the availability, the better the quality. Almond milk, oat cream, coconut milk ice cream, dark chocolate, agave syrup — it hardly sounds like deprivation, does it? And skin that glows, energy that zings.

Going plant based in your forties, as I did, means rediscovering food via new cooking and flavours. It’s a reawakening of your tastebuds, as they experience new tastes — pomegranate syrup, white miso, vegan chorizo, ground almonds, polenta, the list is infinite (and no matter what people say about kale, it’s still horrible). But apart from the endless inventiveness of plant-based cooking and baking, and its health benefits (have a look at The China Study by Cornell University professor of biochemistry Colin T Campbell, which conclusively links consuming animal protein with human cancers), going plant based is also better for the environment. And so to the elephant in the room. Or rather the cow, pig, sheep, chicken.

The principal reason so many of us are going plant based — to personally disengage from animal suffering. A new film highlights how our relationship with animals needs to evolve, so that we reconsider how we regard some animals as family members and others as sandwich filling. “Animals are hidden in the shadows of our highly mechanised world,” writes the maker of The Ghosts In Our Machine. “With the exception of our animal companions and a few wild and stray species within our urban environments, we experience animals daily only as the food, clothing, animal-tested goods and entertainment we make of them.

This moral dilemma is often hidden from our view.” Hence the title of the film, The Ghosts In Our Machine, which has its premiere in Dublin at the end of the month. It does not contain graphic images — it is a film for everyone, created to make the viewer think, rather than have nightmares. We divide animals into three distinct categories. First, our pets — named, loved, part of the family, with a multi-million dollar industry catering to their every need, from specialised foods to expensive accessories to behavioural training, daily care, and veterinary health. The idea of eating or harming our pets is abhorrent. Then there’s wildlife — endangered, beloved, campaigned about, fundraised for, even a bit fetishised.

And then there are the rest. The ghosts. Award-winning Canadian film director and producer Liz Marshall’s film is about these animals, with its human subject and narrative voice provided by the photographer Jo-Anne McArthur. For anyone even slightly fond of animals — and that would include a huge number of us — it is essential viewing, beautiful, powerful, compelling and vivid. The Ghosts In Our Machine is not a vegan propaganda film — Marshall is not going for shock tactics, or emotional coercion. That, she says, would be counterproductive. (Having said that, my partner Dani and his teenage son haven’t eaten meat since viewing it.)

Talking to Liz Marshall on the phone in Toronto, she is quick to say that this is not about hectoring, guilt inducing, or haranguing people to make personal changes. “Although Dani is the targeted demographic,” she says. “Because the film touched his heart and mind.” She is keen to reach a wider demographic beyond bunny-lovers like myself. The Ghosts In Our Machine was inspired in part by the Oscar-nominated film Black Fish, about the ethical questionability of keeping orcas in captivity in giant swimming pools to perform tricks for the paying public. “People are starting to wake up,” says Marshall.

“There is undeniable science that all animals are sentient beings. People are starting to realise this.” Indeed the day I speak to Marshall, it is reported that scientists have conclusively proved that crustaceans — crayfish, lobsters, crabs — are sentient, feel pain, and can experience anxiety. That they are a bit more than shelled snacks. People really are starting to wake up — in the same week, the EU banned all cosmetic testing on animals. “There are so many activists working on so many different levels to change so many things,” Marshall says. “To change the law, change global awareness, create policy change. Scientists, lawyers, researchers, political activists — the film is a tool of this movement.”

And photographer Jo-Anne McArthur is its vehicle. “I feel like I am photographing changes in history in terms of animals rights and where it is going,” she says in the film. “Leaving the animals [at the farms, fur farms, slaughter houses] is always the hardest thing, and leaving is the reason I’m haunted. Leaving them behind.”

To recover her strength to keep going, she spends time at an animal sanctuary.

Unsurprisingly, consumers magazines won’t publish her images. They are too powerful. You can fairly easily read about where your lunch or your shoe leather comes from, but to actually see it is a different matter — a photo can have a much stronger impact on the fur, animal testing and farming industries than, say, direct action. For instance, if an animal testing laboratory is illegally damaged by an animal liberation activist, three things happen — the laboratory is covered by insurance, the activist has broken the law and is criminalised, and the general public tend not to be overly sympathetic, even if the activist’s motivation is genuinely ethical. But a photograph is another thing entirely, and can stop you in its tracks, and jolt you awake.

At the start of the film we see a New York photographic agency explaining to Marshall that although they really admire her work, there is no room in commercial magazines for it. We don’t want to see the ghosts. “This is an enormous issue,” says Liz Marshall. “Which is why the film places a human subject at its heart.” Marshall came to the subject of how we treat animals via her previous work concerning social and environmental justice — she saw how the lives of animals are interconnected with the lives of all of us. That they are not objects or property, but living feeling beings. “It is the next frontier of social justice,” she says.

“It comes on the heels of the environmental movement, with traction and momentum happening daily.” There is no single best approach — nor, says Marshall, any need for criticism. Just debate, and thinking. Consider, she says, the UN report that tells us how the animal agri-industry has far more of an environmental impact that transport, yet we worry about air miles far more than burgers. And that’s before you ever consider human health, empathy and ethics.

Before you ever hug a bunny. Ten billion animals die every year for our dinner, not including the ones in the sea. Dairy, says Jo-Anne McArthur in the film, is perhaps the cruellest, because although dairy cows live naturally for a couple of decades, within the industry they are butchered after three or four years, quite literally milked to death. We all know the expression to milk something dry — this is where it comes from.

Cows are the most attached parents, yet the dairy industry causes appalling suffering — and that’s before you ever contemplate a burger. Or veal. These facts are not presented to alienate anyone, or to cause guilt or anger, but to ponder. “Will the world go vegan tomorrow?” Marshall asks. “No it won’t. I’m pragmatic. But if more people consume less animals, then this is something we are working towards.” Contextually, it’s the next logical step in the evolution of our own species.

Many of humanity’s great minds — Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Gandhi, George Bernard Shaw — eschewed consuming animals. The rest of us may finally be starting to catch up. Perhaps one day we will look back at factory farming and animal cruelty with the same horror we reserve for slavery, child labour, and the oppression of minorities. Films like The Ghosts In Our Machine may help this process of evolution to speed up a bit.

Ireland’s Magdalene survivors are still waiting for justice

  

ONE THING THAT WOULD HELP RECTIFY THE FAILINGS OF THE MCALEESE REPORT INTO THE MAGDALENE LAUNDRIES WOULD BE TO INCLUDE THEM IN THE MOTHER-AND-BABY HOME INQUIRY, 

The Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) on the Magdalene Laundries vindicated Justice for Magdalenes’ (JFM, now JFM Research) contention of extensive state involvement with these institutions. The IDC also went well beyond its mandate and produced a report offering an inaccurate and incomplete representation of the experiences of those who were incarcerated against their will.

The McAleese Report utterly failed the Magdalene women, both living and dead, and their families. The ‘Magdalene Names Project’ is a JFM Research initiative which examines various archives and records, including gravestones, census records, electoral registers, exhumation orders and newspaper archives. Primarily, the project seeks to offer a narrative that honours the lives of those who lived and died behind Magdalene Laundry walls.

However, the research also sheds light on other matters, not least the issue of how long women were confined. According to the McAleese Report, 61% of known entries spent less than a year in Ireland’s 10 Magdalene institutions. Unfortunately, as the IDC chose to return records to the religious orders and destroy all copies, it is not possible to verify this assertion. However, the Names Project’s initial findings, based on comparisons between Magdalene grave records and electoral registers, cast serious doubt on the IDC’s position.

For example, 63.43% of the women who appear on the electoral register for High Park from 1954-55 also appear on the laundry’s headstones at Glasnevin Cemetery, revealing that they spent a minimum of nine years confined and 61.43% of the women from 1955-56 were there for a minimum of eight years. The electoral registers for the Donnybrook laundry reveal similar results when compared to information on gravestones for that institution, with 63.11% in 1954-55 incarcerated for a minimum of nine years and 67.88% of those in 1955-56 incarcerated for a minimum of eight years.

Most disturbing are the numbers of women who never got to leave. In Donnybrook’s case, the available electoral registers for 1954-64 indicate that over half of these women are buried in the graveyard at the old laundry site, while almost 30% of the women in High Park during the same time frame are buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. JFM was founded in 2003 on foot of revelations about the exhumations at High Park laundry in Drumcondra.

Ten years earlier, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity sold some of their property after incurring losses on the stock exchange and successfully applied to the Department of the Environment for an order to exhume the remains of 133 women buried on the site. After the undertakers discovered an additional 22 remains during the exhumation, the Department supplied an additional order to allow the removal of ‘all human remains’. The Sisters told the Department that they could not produce death certificates for 58 of the women on the initial exhumation order, 24 of whom appear under quasi-religious names, denying them their birth identity.

The remains of all but one of the 155 women were then cremated and re-interred at Glasnevin Cemetery. It is unfathomable that this issue remains unresolved 11 years after Mary Raftery first shone light on it. JFM repeatedly brought High Park to the attention of the IDC. However, the McAleese Report offers a flimsy explanation of the circumstances surrounding the exhumations, leaving more questions than answers.

The reader is expected to take the report’s analysis at face value; for example, it relies on research carried out by the religious order on its own records, research that is neither supplied in the appendices nor available in the public domain. Incredibly, the IDC chose to accept an ‘administrative reason’ (the absence of archived or catalogued records) as explanation for the serious anomalies surrounding the exhumations. JFM raised other issues concerning Magdalene Laundry deaths with the IDC.

However, Chapter 16 of the McAleese Report ignores these aspects of our Principal Submission. For instance, questions remain about a 30-year gap in the grave records for the Good Shepherd Laundry at Sunday’s Well in Cork. In fact, the Report makes no reference to there being any issue at Sunday’s Well and offers no explanation as to whether there is another grave location and/or if the Good Shepherd Sisters are still in possession of all records for women and girls incarcerated in their institution.

And, the Report fails to address the fact that a number of names are duplicated on different Sunday’s Well grave sites, with the same woman’s name and the same date of death — as reported in the Irish Examiner. Perhaps the gravest failing of Chapter 16 of Martin McAleese’s Report is the exclusion of the deaths of former Magdalene women in institutionalised settings after the closure of the laundries. The Report categorises these women as ‘nursing home’ deaths, denying in death their identity as Magdalenes, which deprived them of human dignity in life. Moreover, it fails to quantify the extent of these deaths.

This elision may explain why JFM Research has the names of 190 women whose existence is not included in the McAleese Report. By the same token, we remain stymied by the Report’s inclusion of 185 women from High Park and Sean McDermott Street that we were previously unaware of and whose burial place remains a mystery. This is not surprising however, considering the Report absolutely ignores the issue of unmarked graves.

The Report unquestionably reflects the information provided by the religious orders, and only that information. JFM was founded by three adopted women, two of whom are daughters of Magdalene women, and the organisation has always been keenly aware of the linkages between the two issues. Most adopted people assume their natural mothers went on to have happy lives, and those who discover that their mothers never saw freedom experience shock, sadness and betrayal by the State. For those adopted people whose mothers died in the Magdalene Laundries or remain institutionalised under the nuns’ charge, they deserve access to the truth.

They are entitled to know the fate of their mothers. At a bare minimum, they are entitled to the location of a grave with their mother’s name inscribed on it. The McAleese Report failed to deliver these basic entitlements to the Magdalene women and their families. There is now an opportunity to rectify this failure by including the Magdalene Laundries in the forthcoming Mother and Baby Home Commission of Investigation.