News Ireland update on Thursday as told by Donie

A New Irish mapping free tool is launched

It allows analysis of specific areas across the whole island in terms of accessibility to 24-hour emergency hospitals, fire stations, GP surgeries, Garda and PSNI stations and schools.

            

Prof Rob Kitchin, director of NIRSA at NUI Maynooth

A new mapping tool has been launched which allows users to pinpoint an area of the country and find its drive time from services such as hospitals and schools.

The free tool has been developed by NUI Maynooth’s National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis.

The mapping tool shows that if you live in Dublin, you’re on average eight minutes drive from a 24-hour emergency hospital. However if you live in parts of Kerry, north Mayo or south west Donegal, the travel time to the nearest 24-hour centre could be more than one hour.

In general, average travel times to services in Northern Ireland are lower than in the Republic.

The average access to a 24-hour full emergency hospital in Northern Ireland is 16 minutes while it’s 21minutes in the Republic.

Travel times to the nearest education services such as primary and secondary schools are roughly comparable north and south of the Border.

Parts of west Mayo and the Iveragh peninsula in Kerry are some of the least accessible to schools on the island, with many areas being more than 30 minutes from the closest secondary school. Most people on the island are about seven minutes drive from the nearest secondary school.

Prof Rob Kitchin, director of NIRSA at NUI Maynooth said mapping tools such as this were critical to policy makers, local authorities, businesses and communities in planning, funding and introducing schemes and initiatives.

NUI Maynooth president Prof Philip Nolan said this was a world-class mapping system.

“And it’s great to see a project make such a tangible contribution to the knowledge base of the country. This new system represents a significant breakthrough in the way that planning can be approached across the island of Ireland.”

Number of people with dementia set to triple over next 30 years

  

Minister for Health James Reilly with Prof Eamon O’Shea, NUI Galway, and Prof Suzanne Cahill, Trinity College Dublin, at the publication of Creating Excellence in Dementia Care yesterday

THE NUMBER of people with dementia in Ireland is expected to triple over the next 30 years and they will be a “huge burden” on the State without a long-term care strategy, Minister for Health James Reilly has said.

Currently more than 41,000 Irish people have dementia, costing an estimated €1.7 billion in care every year but the number of those with the disease is likely to rise to 147,000 by 2041.

A new report on dementia in Ireland suggests diagnosis of the condition is the exception rather than the rule for those at home.

The report estimates that 41,700 have the disease based on the prevalence in other countries and 26,104 are cared for in their own homes. There are an estimated 50,000 family carers in Ireland looking after someone with at least one of the six specified symptoms of dementia.

The rest are in nursing homes. Two-thirds of all nursing home residents suffer from dementia.

The report, which will form the basis of the Government’s national strategy on dementia, stated that most of those who remain at home “are not aware that they have the disease and few are likely to be in contact with the health and social care systems”.

Only a small proportion of people with dementia are receiving critical services such as daycare, public health nursing, homecare packages and respite.

Mr Reilly told a conference on dementia in Trinity College Dublin’s Science Gallery yesterday that a better diagnosis of dementia had to be a priority and there may need to be a public awareness campaign. He said early intervention and diagnosis would give dementia sufferers the best quality of life possible.

When questioned as to how the Government could develop a strategy on dementia at a time of cutbacks, Mr Reilly said the evidence showed that properly funded homecare was a preferable option to nursing home care.

He described dementia as a “tragedy” for families. He said many families would empathise with Minister for Finance Michael Noonan, whose wife, Flor, has Alzheimer’s. He gave an interview about the condition to Pat Kenny last year.

“Watching him I was struck by how often he spoke about his failures,” Mr Reilly said yesterday.

“He said he didn’t make decisions as quickly as he should have done. I suspect many families in similar situations found themselves nodding as he talked. One of the cruelties of Alzheimer’s is its unpredictability,”

The report, entitled Creating Excellence in Dementia Care, was funded by Atlantic Philanthropies and was written by Prof Suzanne Cahill and Dr Maria Pierce of TCD and Prof Eamon O’Shea from the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology.

Prof Cahill said dementia remained “a hugely underfunded and underprioritised health issue in the country”.

Irelands Septic tank owners may avoid an upgrade, says MINISTER HOGAN

 

The old system on the left and the new Environmental legislative 2007 system on the right

OWNERS OF older septic tanks will not be forced to upgrade them to the latest Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards under the Water Services Bill, Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan said yesterday.

Providing what he said was “a lot of reassurance” on the controversial septic tanks issue, Mr Hogan also said he may yet introduce a grant scheme for householders whose septic tanks are found to be polluting watercourses.

He also told an all-day sitting of the Oireachtas Committee on the Environment that where septic tanks needed improvement work, that work would be exempt from planning permission.

It was already an offence for waste-water systems to discharge pollution to a watercourse, he said, accusing a number of politicians, including Éamon Ó Cuív and Mattie McGrath, of whipping up public concern by “spreading misinformation” on the new Bill.

Mr Hogan said Ireland had lost a case at the European Court of Justice and was now facing substantial fines.

“We are here because we lost a court case, I could blame a lot of people for the reasons we are here,” he said.

“I would remind Mr Ó Cuív this case would not be going on now if he had done his business, he and his predecessors.”

Referring to the standards for septic tanks which would be put in place under the Water Services Bill, Mr Hogan said the current EPA guidelines which date from 2009, applied “only to new build”.

He acknowledged that many septic tanks across the State were decades old and said septic tanks dating from the 1980s or 1970s, or even earlier, would not be subject to that particular EPA guidance.

“I am going for a risk-based approach,” he said, adding that this was “less onerous” than the current EPA standard or the annual inspection system in place in Co Cavan.

He would wait, he said, until the results of the first inspections to assess whether a grant system would be put in place.

“But I am not going to write a blank cheque,” he added.

Mr Ó Cuív took issue with the assertion that the 2009 Environmental Protection Agency standards would not apply, while he acknowledged that Mr Hogan’s comments provided for better progress than had been made in previous debates.

Mr Ó Cuív said the Bill provided for a national inspection plan to be drawn up. But the EPA would be responsible for making such a plan, he said, and suggested the authority would not tolerate a situation where different standards would apply to septic tanks across the Republic.

Mr Ó Cuív also said the inspection system, based on a €50 registration fee, would not pay for itself.

He said the concern was that charges would be passed on to the householder.

A Woman dies in Carraroe Galway after a road collision

    

A WOMAN PEDESTRIAN IN her 40s has died after being hit by a car in Carraroe, Co Galway, this evening. The incident occurred on the R336 at Baile na hAbhann at approximately 6pm, according to Gardaí.

The woman was taken to University College Hospital Galway where she was pronounced dead. The driver of the car was uninjured.

This road has been closed pending completion of an examination by Garda forensic collision investigators and local diversions are in place.                                                
The road is expected to remain closed overnight.