News Ireland Tuesday update as told by Donie

Tourist town Ballina to become the Botox capital of the world 

In a major jobs boost for the west of Ireland

  

Westport is set to become the Botox capital of the world.

US pharmaceutical giant Allergan – which manufactures the anti-wrinkle drug — yesterday confirmed a massive (€274m) expansion in the Co Mayo town which will create 200 new jobs over the next four years.

A further 250 jobs will be created in the construction of a new manufacturing and development centre at a technology park alongside the existing plant.

The expansion will bring the total job numbers at the Allergan facility in Westport to more than 1,000.

A further 100 people are employed at the company’s Dublin offices, providing a range of customer services.

The huge jobs boost will make the quiet tourist town on the Mayo coast, with a population of about 5,500, the envy of towns several times its size elsewhere in the country.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny joined senior management figures of Allergan Pharmaceuticals Ireland and IDA Ireland for the jobs announcement in Westport.

The company, which is a subsidiary of Allergan Inc, headquartered at Irvine in California, has had operations in Westport since 1977.

The investment follows approval last year for the use of Botox for a number of medical problems, including chronic migraineand urinary incontinence in adults arising from multiple sclerosis or spinal cord injury.

At present, Botox for cosmetic use — primarily in eliminating crow’s feet and wrinkles in ageing women — accounts for about 50pc of the drug’s usage. But its therapeutic use for medical conditions has been growing significantly.

Mr Kenny agreed that the development had confirmed Westport as the Botox capital of the world: “They’re looking from places all over the globe to Westport because Westport manufactures what people want . . . it’s a wonderful company.”

Mr Kenny added: “This (investment) is a commitment by this plant to this region for the next 25-30 years. From that point of view, it is very significant.”

IDA chief executive Barry O’Leary pointed out that Allergan was already contributing an average of $25m per annum to the Irish economy.

In a second major jobs boost yesterday, IT consultancy firm Accenture revealed that it is to hire 100 individuals skilled in cloud computing, Java, SAP and mobility workplace collaboration technologies.

Mark Ryan, country managing director with Accenture Ireland, said yesterday that clients were looking to the company to reduce costs and improve efficiencies.

Accenture already employs more than 1,000 people in Ireland and provides management consultancy, technology services and outsourcing to the private and public sector, includingMicrosoft, Kerry Group and the Revenue Commissioners.

The announcement follows the company’s investment in the new Accenture Analytics Innovation Centre in Dublin last year.

And a significant number of new jobs are expected to be created as Sammon Contracting Ltd starts work on a primary care facility in Newbridge, Co Kildare.

The €7.8m development is a public/private venture between Clarington Primary Care, Centric Health, Kildare VEC and the HSE.

Meanwhile, there were fears last night for up to 100 jobs at the La Senza chain of lingerie stores in Ireland after the company went into administration.

John Douglas, general secretary of the Mandate retail union, said staff had been told not to come into work today because the company is in administration.

Mr Douglas said the union would try to make contact with the administrators today to establish the exact situation and the position on jobs.

‘Too many Irish people drink too much’ 

The time is right to change it

 

Labour Minister hits out at low cost of alcohol and says ‘the time is right’ to tackle Ireland’s ‘unhealthy relationship’ with drink,

MINISTER OF State for Primary Care Róisín Shortall has restated her commitment to address problem drinking in the Republic. The Minister said she would tackle the “unhealthy relationship” Irish people have with alcohol through a combination of higher prices, restrictions on points of sale and other measures.

Ms Shortall pointed to the dramatic reduction in the real cost of alcohol to consumers in the past decade. Declining prices and more widespread availability in major retailers had become key factors in fostering a culture of excessive alcohol consumption, she said.

“Alcohol is available at an all-time-low price, and that causes or contributes to problems associated with drinking, particularly with younger people but also with people who are problem drinkers,” she said.

The Minister said selling alcohol below cost price was a serious issue and stressed alcohol could not be viewed like any other commodity, given its potential for harm. Alcohol abuse costs the State an estimated €3.7 billion each year through illness, absenteeism and crime. Despite the fact that below-cost selling had driven prices to such low levels, the Minister said she had never raised the issue of pricing or availability with the State’s largest retailers.

Ms Shortall said Irish people had “an unhealthy relationship with alcohol” and “the time is right to tackle that”. She stressed the problem was not confined to a particular cohort and said excessive drinking was an issue for “middle-aged women” who have taken to drinking up to four glasses of wine each night before bed, or older men who drink excessively in their local pub.

Youth Work Ireland expressed support for reported plans to address the low cost of alcohol in Ireland and said such a move was necessary to deal with the State’s alcohol problem. “Irish alcohol policy has been based on a form of laissez faire for far too long and it is high time that the Government take a more hands-on approach to these issues,” Michael McLoughlin of Youth Work Ireland said.

The Irish Bishops’ Drugs and Alcohol Initiative welcomed the proposal to introduce a minimum price for alcohol. Bishop Éamonn Walsh said alcohol was used by multiple retailers as a “loss-leader”. “Alcohol misuse is a public health concern which needs a remedy such as a unique New Year’s resolution between Government, multiple retailers, the drinks industry and the consumer to radically improve – once and for all – the Irish relationship with alcohol.”

Taoiseach urges clarity in Pensioners tax letter controversy

 

The TAOISEACH ENDA Kenny has called for clarity to be brought to the ongoing controversy surrounding Revenue’s recent letter to pensioners.  Concerned older people and their families are continuing to contact special helplines opened last Friday.

A Revenue spokesman was unable to say how many calls were received yesterday, but he confirmed that about 20,000 were logged on Friday and Saturday together. Such has been the confusion that calls have also been received from people who did not receive one of the 150,000 letters.

Mr Kenny said the decision to dispatch the letters last week after receiving new information about pension payments from the Department of Social Protection had caused “anxiety and concern” among pensioners. “I accept that there’s been confusion and therefore anxiety and concern for numbers of people who are pensioners as a result of the letters that were sent out by the Revenue Commissioners,” Mr Kenny said.

“The Revenue Commissioners themselves are in before the Oireachtas committees this week and obviously what’s important now is that there be clarity brought to this matter as quickly as possible so that everybody knows where they stand.”

MR KENNY WAS SPEAKING IN HIS MAYO CONSTITUENCY YESTERDAY.

Revenue officials and Department of Social Protection personnel will appear before the Oireachtas finance, public expenditure and reform committee tomorrow afternoon. On the agenda are matters relating to pensions and potential tax liabilities.

Fine Gael chairman Charlie Flanagan described the situation as a “debacle” in one of a number of tweets he posted about the controversy yesterday. “Pensioner fear, anxiety and anger continues over tax probe. My constituency very busy with Laois-Offaly queries from early morning,” Mr Flanagan said.

Fianna Fáil accused the Government of attempting to distance itself from the matter, with environment spokesman Niall Collins also calling on the Revenue Commissioners to provide a temporary community outreach service to address pensioners’ concerns.

“This situation has been very badly handled by all involved. The Government have attempted to distance themselves from the controversy despite the fact that they knew that this mail-out was taking place more than a month in advance, at the very least. Still they chose not to inform pensioners about what was to happen,” Mr Collins said.

“I am calling on Revenue to go out into the community and provide a temporary outreach service to give these people the opportunity to get personal advice on paying back any extra tax owed due to a miscalculation of their liabilities.”

Revenue has continued to defend its action with Declan Rigney, principal officer in PAYE, planning and support services arguing that a general notification or series of advertisements might have created more confusion.

“Our approach was to send out specific targeted letters to people to try and explain as best we could their particular circumstances. The alternative would have been to go with a general notification and I suppose we had concerns that if we were to do that it could end up confusing and upsetting a lot more people,” Mr Rigney said. Mr Kenny said he had heard this statement, but did not express a view on it.

Some 150,000 pensioners have received letters from the Revenue. An estimated 115,000 of these have tax liabilities, the majority of whom are on smaller occupational pensions. Single people over 65 with an annual total income of less than €18,000, or married people on less than €36,000, are exempt from income tax. Also not liable for income tax are people in receipt of a long-term Department of Social Protection pension with no other sources of income.

Two searches taking place for men in Galway & Mayo

  

The Shannon Coast guard helicopter and lifeboats crews are assisting Gardaí and volunteers in a search along the Galway Coastline for a 19 year old man. The search is focusing on the coastline from Oranmore Galway to Strandhill in Sligo.

The Shannon Coast guard helicopter and lifeboats crews are assisting Gardaí and volunteers in a search along the Galway Coastline.

A 19 year old man who was last seen entering the water near O’Brien’s bridge in Galway city at around 2.45am yesterday morning.

Today’s search is focusing on the coastline from Oranmore to Strandhill.

In a separate development, the search for a man in his 30′s in Co Mayo has been called off due to bad weather in the area. He has been missing for a number of days.

Earlier today, Gardaí and the lifeboat services had searched the Clew Bay and Westport Quay following a land and sea search for the last few days.

Irish colleges and universities expenses for just seven of them 

blows through a staggering €750k on cabs

   

The more things change, the more things stay the same.
If there was one adage that could sum up public sector spending in Ireland, that could quite possibly be it.

The latest expenses revelation concerning Ireland’s publicly-funded university sector is that they’ve managed to spend a stellar €750,000 on cabs in the last two years alone.

And given that there are just seven of them doing the spending, that works out at a fairly substantial amount.

The worst culprit was University College Cork (UCC), which saw fit to dish out €263,000 — or 35% of the total spend — on transporting the likes of lecturers, visiting academics, and other motley recipients of the massive funding dish-out, followed by the University of Maynooth (€128,038), and DCU (€95,000).

“One has to question if that is the case in respect of all the universities, but particularly in UCC, given its proximity to the train station and the airport,” Cork South West Labour TD Michael McCarthy said, commenting on the news.”

“There have to be consequences and the minister must take action to prevent wastage of money if there is found to be unjustified spending.”
Unfortunately, while desirable, that’s hardly the way things currently stand.

The universities and the Department of Education seem perfectly happy to engage in a continuous game of passing the buck and shirking responsibility for whatever (and there have been many) funding blunders are found to occur.

This was neatly exemplified in a quote from the Irish Examiner outlining the Department’s reaction:

“A spokesperson for Mr Quinn said the universities have their own governing authorities and accountability structures to determine how their funding is spent,” the newspaper’s chief education correspondent, Niall Murray, reported. The problem goes beyond universities’ spending, however.

At a time when one now-deposed think tank member warns that Ireland is facing into a potential ten years of further austerity Budgets, it’s hardly reassuring for the general population to know that Departmental and public service spending is largely dictated by the whims of those in charge of the Budgets, with seemingly very little in the way of checks and balances available to right the many wrongs that have been found on the part of those administering the systems.

While the Government seems to have no doubt about the consequences attending not paying the much hated householder tax, the consequences for making reckless use of the taxpayers’ money on the part of the government and its quangos seem to be – at best – a cursory drag through the Public Accounts Committee, but more often than not a drag through the media, after which the media moves on to dealing with the next bout of recklessness.

The news also adds strongly to the feeling of hypocrisy surrounding those at the pinnacle of higher education in Ireland, who seem happy to vouch for raised student contributions, but unhappy to address the often endemic spending crises that go on in the institutions over which they govern.

UCC’s Michael Murphy has been one of the strongest advocates for increased fees, and drew heavy criticism for elitist remarks about disadvantaged students’ right of access to third level, but increasingly seems happy to ignore realities such as these, his salary (Murphy is the highest paid university president in Ireland), or the generally high wage-base at the top of UCC.

While I’m an admirer of Murphy as a president and the fantastic work he’s done on furthering UCC’s global reputation and research clout, I believe that his strong pro-fee position will only prove tenable if he’s willing to make a real bond-fide effort to tackle spending on the part of staff of UCC. Otherwise, talk of increased expenses will only continue to draw the obvious retort of what the university is doing to minimize costs.

More than anything, though, it’s the Irish people who deserve better than this.
Maybe this small scandal will make a ripple of a distance