‘Steering group’ Calls for a ban on all alcohol sponsorship in Ireland
The ‘Report of the National Substance Misuse Strategy steering group’ calls for a ban on all alcohol sponsorship of sporting and large outdoor events.
The Government must get fully behind a new strategy to address alcohol misuse, members of the steering group on the issue have said.
The ‘Report of the National Substance Misuse Strategy steering group’ was published today amid questions about levels of Government support and concerns the drinks’ industry may persuade legislators against its more radical recommendations.
It calls for a ban on all alcohol sponsorship of sporting and large outdoor events, a ban on all outdoor advertising of alcohol, an increase in the excise duties on some alcohol products and the introduction of a minimum price per gram of alcohol.
Four members of Government – Ministers Pat Rabbitte, Leo Varadkar, Jimmy Deenihan and Simon Coveney – have expressed concerns about the proposed restrictions on advertising and the phasing out of events’ sponsorship by 2016.
The report also calls for the introduction of a “social responsibility” levy on the drinks industry which could be used to help fund sporting events and a reduction in the weekly “safe” number of units of alcohol for women from 18 to 11, and for men from 21 units to 17.
Minister of State with responsibility for primary care, Róisín Shorthall, who has championed the strategy, gave a brief statement before the main presentation of the report and then left.
A “huge amount of work” had gone into the report which would be a “welcome contribution to the debate which will now get underway on our relationship with alcohol”.
She plans to bring it to the Oireachtas health committee in coming weeks and to draw up an “clear action plan in two or three months on how society deals with alcohol”.
Asked which recommendations she would like to see in the action plan she said, “a lot of them”.
Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer and Chairman of the steering committee hoped the report would be “adopted in full” by Government.
Denis Bradley, representative of the voluntary sector on the National Advisory Committee on Drugs and a member of the steering committee, said all politicians must now “grab this report”.
“A lot of these recommendations have been put to Government before and Government has walked away from them. Politicians must look at the report in its totality and not fight for their own narrow interests whether that’s in communications, transport or sport.
“This report is not about stopping drinking, or the nanny state. This is about reducing the amount of alcohol we consume which is outrageously high.”
The average Irish adult consumed 11.9 litres of pure alcohol in 2010, equivalent to 482 pints of lager, 125 bottles of wine or 45 bottles of vodka.
“This report needs Government support. It needs legislative support to bring about the change this country needs,” said Mr Bradley. He called on the four Ministers who had raised concerns , and the Minister for Health James Reilly, to state their support for “the thrust of the report”.
Burton blames the Troika
As she defends cuts to employment schemes
THE TROIKA has failed to recognise the “intrinsic social value” of some community employment schemes, Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton has told the Dáil as she defended cuts in the scheme.
A major condition of continued funding from the EU-IMF is on reforming “activation policies”, but schemes playing an important role in communities include helping the disabled live independently or delivering meals on wheels to older citizens.
Ms Burton said her Department would stop the current practice of giving the same level of training and material grants to all schemes regardless of the length of time participants were on schemes.
She said there were about 2,000 participants on schemes for five years or more. “Their need for training is considerably less than those who are new entrants.”
During a Sinn Féin private member’s debate calling for a reversal of cuts in the schemes, Ms Burton insisted that that “no scheme will be forced to close as a result of the reduction in the materials and training grants during the period of the financial review”.
But Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh who introduced the private member’s motion, claimed the Minister was “reinstating old unemployment traps and she knows it well. She is condemning lone parents and their children to poverty and isolation.” Ms Burton insisted “there are no reductions in places and no reductions in the number of supervisors”. There are 1,143 community employment schemes with about 22,000 participants and 1,300 full-time supervisors earning €58 million in wages.
She pointed to repeated reports critical of some schemes and said “all CE schemes will see a reduction in the level of training and materials grants compared to 2011 but the reduction will vary according to the needs of participants and project circumstances.”
There had always been significant flexibility to vary the amount of the grant paid depending on need and “up to €1,000 may be available to a scheme in respect of the training and materials grant for this year, subject to demonstration of need”.
The budget for the schemes in 2012 is €315 million.
Mr Ó Snodaigh said that a lone parent with three children would have their pay cut from €504.80 to €452.90 for 19.5 hours of work. Community employment was one of the few activation measures open to lone parents but the associated social welfare cuts “now make it unaffordable and so is closing it off for them”, he said.
Ireland’s cheapest house? Cottage in Leitrim with a €7,500 reserve
A COTTAGE (pic. above) in Co Leitrim is to go under the hammer next month with a reserve price of just €7,500. The two-bed rural retreat is one of 100 lots to be auctioned in the next Allsop Space auction on March 1.
The cottage is situated near Gallough’s Lough, 2km outside the south Leitrim village of Carrigallen and features a reception room, two bedrooms, kitchen, dining room and bathroom.
The best-known property up for auction is the Sandhouse Hotel in Rossnowlagh, Co Donegal, which has a guide price of €650,000 — a drop of 89pc on the price sought for the hotel when it was offered for sale in 2008. Last year, the price was cut to €1.5m, but it failed to secure a buyer.
Overlooking a long stretch of sandy beach, the 55-bedroom hotel has hosted a range of film stars and historic figures. Former British prime minister Tony Blair spent some childhood holidays there and it was once a holiday-hideaway spot for Mia Farrow and Woody Allen before their marriage hit the rocks.
Paul Diver, who had managed the hotel for the Britton family before it went into liquidation in 2009, has continued to manage it for the liquidator KPMG. He plans to re-open it this weekend prior to Valentine’s Day after its closure for the traditional winter break.
Auction: The 100 properties up for auction have a combined target value of €10.3m
Some 74 of the 100 properties to go under the hammer will be residential, including 41 apartments and 33 houses. Nine of the houses are in Dublin, with prices ranging from only €35,000 to €100,000.
The cheapest Dublin house is a four-bedroom, mid-terrace period house with a reserve of €35,000 on Dublin’s Seville Place, close to Connolly Station, and is the street where film producer brothers Jim and Peter Sheridan grew up.
The most expensive Dublin house is 1 Drumcliffe Drive, Cabra, Dublin 7 — a three-bedroom, semi-detached property priced at €100,000 and which is generating a rental income of €10,800 a year.
In Dublin 8, a three-bed redbrick house at 15 Church Avenue South, Rialto, is guiding at €80,000. The Dublin houses are much cheaper than many of the Dublin apartments which are being sold.
Some of the most popular flats to sell in each of the four Allsop Space auctions last year were at Liam Carroll’s Castleforbes Square development in Dublin’s North docklands.
In next month’s auction a further 10 of these will be on offer with guide prices of €135,000 for two-bedroom flats, which are practically unchanged from the guides quoted in last November’s auction.
One of the more photogenic properties on offer is a mill residence in Rathvilly, Co Carlow, which has a €150,000 guide.
Also going under the hammer is a former church in Duleek, Co Meath, which has been converted into a restaurant whose name, The Spire, reflects its aspirations. Its guide price is €60,000.
Finally the inevitable truth– Ireland’s operations waiting lists are growing longer
‘staff exodus to blame’
The Irish Health Minister James Reilly says operations have to wait.
THE staff exodus from hospitals this month will result in longer waiting lists for surgery, the Health Minister has admitted. James Reilly has eventually accepted that the massive number of retirements will see vital operations postponed.
Experts say the health system will come under intense pressure to grapple with more than 3,500 early retirements from March 1.
kidney operations: Patients are now bracing themselves to be told that their operations will be put back.
The minister conceded that patients waiting for surgery will be affected, describing the situation as a bit of a “conundrum”.
“I’ve absolutely no problem in saying that if one of the things we have to do is slow down on elective inpatient procedures for a short period of time to allow us absorb this change, then we’ll do that,” he said.
“But we will increase our productivity toward the middle of the year, because I have made it very clear that the new challenge this year is that every patient be treated within nine months,” he added.
Experts believe that elective operations — those that are not considered emergencies but which may be important — will be the first to be postponed.
This means that people waiting for the likes of kidney transplants and hip replacements will face delays.
Health sources fear the serious effects on hospitals when thousands of workers leave the sector next month.
Those retiring include 1,678 nurses, 84 consultants, 22 radiographers and 30 emergency medical staff.
Some 494 staff will leave the Dublin Mid-Leinster region with 964 employees retiring in the HSE West region.
Dr Reilly has described plans to address the impact of the retirement scheme as “well advanced”.
But Fianna Fail Health Spokesman Billy Kelleher believes it is vital patients are “given assurances”.
“What I’d clearly like the minister to do is to outline and publish the plan that they say they have in place along with the HSE to give assurances to the people that may need those emergency services, that may need maternity services in the very near future,” he said.
“So all we’re looking for is that the plan would be published. We can all look at it, and if there is deficiencies and inadequacies in it we can highlight it.”
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